IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2015 - 10

COMPETITIONS

Surgical Robot Challenge 2015
By Robert Merrifield and Guang-Zhong Yang

he first international Surgical
Robot Challenge took place in
London, United Kingdom,
17-21 June 2015. During the
challenge, 18 teams from around the
world took part in the finals of the competition that was held as part of the
Hamlyn Symposium for Medical Robotics. The competition saw a broad range
of high-quality entries showcasing hardware and software innovations in surgical robotics. All but two of the entries
were based on the open research platforms dVRK, KUKA, and Raven II. The
competition was supported by Intuitive
Surgical, KUKA, and Applied Dexterity.
Each team had 3 h to set up their robot
kit and give a live demonstration. They
then had to present their platforms to a
judging panel of both academic and
industrial leaders in surgical robotics.
Prizes were awarded in five categories:
best design, best innovation, best application, best live demo, and best video. From
these, the judging panel chose an overall
winner. The total prize fund was
US$10,000.
The winning team, T. Looi, K. Eastwood, V. Bodani, K. Price, K. Upadhyaya,
D. Podolsky, H. Azimian, P. Bowlin, W.
Farhet, and J. Drake, from the Hospital
for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, presented a new concentric tube robot
(video: A Concentric Tube Tool for the
daVinci Research Kit). Concentric tube
robots have shown advantages over conventional continuum robots in terms of
size and articulation. They utilize a series
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2015.2486579
Date of publication: 10 December 2015

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

of curved nitinol tubes that pass through
one another. Using linear and rotational
actuation of each tube with computer
control, it is possible for the tip of the
robot to have a large three-dimensional
(3-D) workspace. The innovation presented by the winning team is in their
design and interface with the popular
daVinci surgical robot, uniquely combining the strength of both platforms. This
entry also won the Best Design Award.
The Best Innovation Award went to A.
Naidu, C. Ward, A. Escoto, M. Naish, and
R. Patel from the University of Western
Ontario, Canada, who presented a dual
modality robot tool (video: Dual Modality
Instrument for Minimally Invasive Robotic
Palpation) that incorporates an ultrasound device and a pressure sensor array
for intraoperative tissue palpation. By
combining both of these modalities into a
single tool, the surgeon can assess tissue in
situ with a greater degree of confidence.
The device was commended by the judging panel for being a practical tool that
shows commercial promise for translation
into routine surgery.
H. Rafii-Tari, A. Vandini, L. Zhang,
and A. Hughes-Hallett, from Imperial
College London, United Kingdom,
won the Best Application Award for a
vision-guided learning by demonstration algorithm. (video: Vision-Guided
Learning by Demonstration for Adaptive
Surgical Robot Control ). The team
demonstrated its use for a suturing
task. The demonstration showed how
the surgical robot could take examples
of a surgeon's actions and generalize
them to handle variability across different surgical scenarios.

DECEMBER 2015

The Best Live Demo Award went to
A. Bihlmaier, S. Bodenstedt, S. Speidel,
H. Wörn, M. Wagner, P. Mietkowski, B.
Muller-Stich, and H. Kenngott from the
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany, for presenting an automatic camera control robot (video: A
Learning Camera Robot for Laparoscopic
Surgery). Camera control is a process
required for the majority of surgical
robotic tasks and is typically handled by
a surgical assistant. Freeing the surgeon
of this enables attention to be spent on
higher-level decisions and finer tool
control. The underlying algorithm for
the human-robot interface can be
applied to a range of surgical tasks, in
addition to intelligent camera control.
The Best Video Award went to S.
Mckinley, S. Sen, A. Garg, Y. Jen, D.
Gealy, W. D. Boyd, P. Abbeel, and K.
Goldberg from Berkeley, California,
who demonstrated automatic control for
tumor localization and extraction
(video: Autonomous Tumor Localization
and Extraction). The video was commended for giving a balanced insight
into the current capabilities and limitations of automated control.
In addition to these winning entries,
teams from around the world demonstrated their unique design and new
approaches to robotic surgery (Figure 1).
A 3-D printed surgical robot was demonstrated at the Robot Challenge. In a matter
of 15 min, a team from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, was able to
set up and start demonstrating its 3-D
printed, tendon-actuated robot. Surgical
robotic tools are typically designed for
generalized patient anatomy. By adopting

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2015