Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Autonomous Robotic Surgery

Abstract:

Robotic surgery is growing in popularity by enabling surgeons with higher dexterity while simultaneously decreasing the invasiveness of the procedure. Furthermore, it paves towards a future where autonomy can be applied in the operating room. However, at the core of surgical autonomy, we must develop techniques for the agent to perceive and interact intelligently with a complex environment that includes rigid tools,
deformable tissue, and fluids. In this talk, I’ll discuss developing physical constraints-based models that incorporate soft tissue and fluid nonlinear characteristics, as well as the dynamics and kinematics of robotic tools. By integrating advanced control techniques like MPC with motion optimization, we enable robots to dynamically adjust their actions in response to the changing surgical environment. Additionally, by identifying the stiffness and the topological attachments, we bridge the gap between physics simulations and 3D visual perceptions, enhancing robotic surgical autonomy. I’ll showcase our method’s capabilities in handling complex tool-tissue interactions, with experimental results from a da Vinci surgical robot and pig trials.

Biography:

Fei Liu, a postdoctoral researcher at the Advanced Robotics and Controls Lab at the University of California San Diego, is currently working with Prof. Michael Yip on their research. Prior to joining UCSD, he held a research associate position both at the Biorobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA) and at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Italy. His PhD was pursued at INSA de Lyon, a prestigious French engineering university. His current research interests are centered at the intersection of robotics, autonomous systems, and machine learning, with a particular emphasis on their application in unstructured environments spanning surgical, biomedical, and healthcare domains. Over the past years, he has authored more than 30 papers in leading journals and conferences such as IEEE RA-L, T-BME, Robotica, ICRA, IROS, RSS, EMBC, among others. He also serves as a reviewer and committee member for these venues. Additionally, he received a nomination for the Best Paper Award at ICRA 2021 for his contributions to autonomous blood suction in surgical robotics.