LapSurgie: Humanoid Robots Performing Surgery via Teleoperated Handheld Laparoscopy

TL;DR

LapSurgie presents a humanoid-robot framework for teleoperated laparoscopic surgery designed to broaden access to MIS in rural and low-resource settings. It combines an inverse-mapping controller for wristed laparoscopic tools with remote center-of-motion constraints and stereo vision feedback, enabling hand-to-tool control on standard instruments. A comparative user study across humanoid, dVRK, and manual conditions demonstrates that the humanoid achieves competitive accuracy to dVRK and greater precision than manual operation, albeit with longer task times. The work substantiates the feasibility of deploying humanoid-based surgical assistance in diverse clinical environments and outlines concrete directions to close the efficiency gap through hardware and control improvements.

Abstract

Robotic laparoscopic surgery has gained increasing attention in recent years for its potential to deliver more efficient and precise minimally invasive procedures. However, adoption of surgical robotic platforms remains largely confined to high-resource medical centers, exacerbating healthcare disparities in rural and low-resource regions. To close this gap, a range of solutions has been explored, from remote mentorship to fully remote telesurgery. Yet, the practical deployment of surgical robotic systems to underserved communities remains an unsolved challenge. Humanoid systems offer a promising path toward deployability, as they can directly operate in environments designed for humans without extensive infrastructure modifications -- including operating rooms. In this work, we introduce LapSurgie, the first humanoid-robot-based laparoscopic teleoperation framework. The system leverages an inverse-mapping strategy for manual-wristed laparoscopic instruments that abides to remote center-of-motion constraints, enabling precise hand-to-tool control of off-the-shelf surgical laparoscopic tools without additional setup requirements. A control console equipped with a stereo vision system provides real-time visual feedback. Finally, a comprehensive user study across platforms demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed framework and provides initial evidence for the feasibility of deploying humanoid robots in laparoscopic procedures.

Figures (10)

• Figure 1: Surgeons teleoperate humanoid robots to conduct surgical tasks. The proposed framework integrates direct control of manual laparoscopic instruments with remote center of motion (RCM) constraints and stereo vision feedback, enabling flexible deployment across diverse surgical settings.
• Figure 2: The overview of the humanoid-based laparoscopic framework. The target tool pose $\textbf{P}_{tt}$ is mapped from the control console handles and used as input for inverse-mapping control of manual laparoscopic instruments. An endoscope is mounted to provide real-time visual feedback, which is rendered through a stereo display to the operator during the procedure.
• Figure 3: A coupling mount for a non-robotic laparoscopic instruments was created. This enabled the humanoid to operate the suite of wristed instruments directly, without modifications, enhancing the system’s generalizability across different laparoscopic needs. In this paper we used two types graspers developed by ArtiSential, held by the same mount.
• Figure 4: (a) The non-actuated laparoscopic tool consists of three main links from 1 to 3. We use three coordinate frames and RCM position in space to define the geometric connections of these components. The handle 1 and handle 2 frames are attached to link 1 and 3, respectively, and both are placed on the joints. (b) Since conventional laparoscopic tools are designed for human operation, the tool wrist motion is fully controlled by the relative angles between each part.
• Figure 5: The relative orientation of the non-actuated instrument is modeled as two independent orthogonal rotations $\theta_1$ and $\theta_2$, which are regulated by both the handle pose and RCM position in space.