Raven-II: An Open Platform for Surgical Robotics Research

Abstract

The Raven-II is a platform for collaborative research on advances in surgical robotics. Seven universities have begun research using this platform. The Raven-II system has two 3-DOF spherical positioning mechanisms capable of attaching interchangeable four DOF instruments. The Raven-II software is based on open standards such as Linux and ROS to maximally facilitate software development. The mechanism is robust enough for repeated experiments and animal surgery experiments, but is not engineered to sufficient safety standards for human use. Mechanisms in place for interaction among the user community and dissemination of results include an electronic forum, an online software SVN repository, and meetings and workshops at major robotics conferences.

Autonomous multilateral debridement with the Raven surgical robot

“…We use the Raven surgical robot system [12], augmented with a stereo vision system for perception, as a testbed for evaluating the feasibility of autonomously performing surgical debridement with two arms (multilateral operation), as shown in Fig. 1.…”

Systematic Design of Medical Capsule Robots

“…Thanks to the open source approach, users can extend the repository with their own modules thus establishing channels of collaboration for design reuse. Similar paradigm shifts are currently taking place in robotics since the introduction of ROS [2], and in surgical robotics with the open source software libraries for the Intuitive Surgical Da Vinci robot [3] and the RAVEN II modular hardware platform [4]. Looking forward, our goal is to open the field of capsule robot design to a wider community and, at the same time, create better designs through advanced tool support.…”

Time-of-flight-assisted Kinect camera-based people detection for intuitive human robot cooperation in the surgical operating room

“…A common advantage of systems such as the DLR Miro [15], the LARS robot [4] and some research systems using the KUKA LWR 4 (KUKA, Germany) [3] is the huge and flexible workspace and a higher applicable payload of the robots that allows usage in multiple applications. This offers new applications like ultrasound (US) probe steering, open surgery with increased accuracy and a suitable workspace, orthopedics interventions using milling devices and saws, as well as the field of minimally invasive robotic surgery that is widely explored, e.g., by Intuitive Surgical [11] and the University of Washington [12].…”