Visually Guided Needle Driving and Pull for Autonomous Suturing

This paper presents a visually-guided autonomous needle driving algorithm for autonomous robotic surgical suturing. Surgical needle tracking, needle path planning, and optimum needle grasp selection algorithms are employed. The procedure is performed in 5 major steps: needle grasp, needle hand-off, needle drive, needle regrasp, and needle pull. The performance of the procedure is experimentally evaluated using the physical da Vinci® surgical robotic system and da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK). Initial results suggest that the dVRK can successfully perform needle driving with visual guidance.