Real-time constrained 6d object-pose tracking of an in-hand suture needle for minimally invasive robotic surgery

Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023 BEST PAPER AWARD

Zih-Yun Chiu, Florian Richter, Michael C Yip

Publisher Link: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10161291/

Abstract: Autonomous suturing has been a long-sought-after goal for surgical robotics. Outside of staged environments, accurate localization of suture needles is a critical foundation for automating various suture needle manipulation tasks in the real world. When localizing a needle held by a gripper, previous work usually tracks them separately without considering their relationship. Because of the significant errors that can arise in the stereo-triangulation of objects and instruments, their reconstructions may often not be consistent. This can lead to unrealistic tool-needle grasp reconstructions that are infeasible. Instead, an obvious strategy to improve localization would be to leverage constraints that arise from contact, thereby constraining reconstructions of objects and instruments into a jointly feasible space. In this work, we consider feasible grasping constraints when tracking the 6D pose of an in-hand suture needle. We …

Chiu et al. (2023) Real-time constrained 6d object-pose tracking of an in-hand suture needle for minimally invasive robotic surgery, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 4761-4767.