Autonomous Camera Movement for Robotic-Assisted Surgery: A Survey

Abstract

In the past decade, Robotic-Assisted Surgery (RAS) has become a widely accepted technique as an alternative to traditional open surgery procedures. The best robotic assistant system should combine both human and robot capabilities under the human control. As a matter of fact robot should collaborate with surgeons in a natural and autonomous way, thus requiring less of the surgeons' attention. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive and structured review of the roboticassisted surgery and autonomous camera movement for RAS operation. We also discuss several topics, including but not limited to task and gesture recognition, that are closely related to robotic-assisted surgery automation and illustrate several successful applications in various real-world application domains. We hope that this paper will provide a more thorough understanding of the recent advances in camera automation in RSA and offer some future research directions.