Because of the increasing use of laparoscopic surgeries, robotic technologies have been developed to overcome the challenges these surgeries impose on surgeons. This paper presents an overview of the current state of surgical robots used in laparoscopic surgeries. Four main categories were discussed: handheld laparoscopic devices, laparoscope positioning robots, master–slave teleoperated systems with dedicated consoles, and robotic training systems. A generalized control block diagram is developed to demonstrate the general control scheme for each category of surgical robots. In order to review these robotic technologies, related published works were investigated and discussed. Detailed discussions and comparison tables are presented to compare their effectiveness in laparoscopic surgeries. Each of these technologies has proved to be beneficial in laparoscopic surgeries.

With most tele-operated robots the operator's only feedback is the view from an onboard camera. Live video lets the operator observe the robot's immediate surroundings but does not establish the orientation or whereabouts of the robot in its environment. An additional plot of the robot's trajectory would be helpful for the operator and is sometimes provided, based on GPS. However, indoors where GPS is unavailable, tracking has to rely on dead-reckoning, which is too inaccurate to be useful. Our proposed TelOpTrak method corrects dead-reckoning errors even when only odometry and a low-cost (and thus, high-drift) MEMS-class gyro are available on the robot. TelOpTrak corrects gyro drift by exploiting the structured nature of most buildings, but without having to directly sense building features. This paper explains the TelOpTrak method and provides comprehensive experimental results.

Earlier versions of this paper (Borenstein et al., 2010a), (Borenstein et al., 2010b) were presented at two conferences. The main difference between the earlier conference papers and the present manuscript is that the latter is more comprehensive, more up-to-date, and it presents an entirely new set of experimental results, including results of a live demonstration at the 2010 Robotics Rodeo event at Ft. Benning, USA.