# Topics > Medical robotics and AI > Robotic surgery, computer-assisted surgery >  Cal-MR: Center for Automation and Learning for Medical Robotics, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA

## Airicist

Co-Director - Ken Goldberg

Co-Director - Pieter Abbeel

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## Airicist

Autonomous Robot Surgery: Performing Surgical Subtasks without Human Intervention 

Published on Oct 14, 2014




> Abstract: Automating repetitive surgical subtasks such as suturing, cutting and debridement can reduce surgeon fatigue and procedure times and facilitate supervised tele-surgery. Programming is difficult because human tissue is deformable and highly specular.
> Using the da Vinci Research Kit (DVRK) robotic surgical assistant, we explore a “Learning By Observation” (LBO) approach where we identify, segment, and parameterize sub-trajectories (“surgemes”) and sensor conditions to build a finite state machine (FSM) for each subtask. The robot then executes the FSM repeatedly to tune parameters and if necessary update the FSM structure.
> 
> We evaluate the approach on two surgical subtasks: debridement of 3D Viscoelastic Tissue Phantoms (3d-DVTP), in which small target fragments are removed from a 3D viscoelastic tissue phantom, and Pattern Cutting of 2D Orthotropic Tissue Phantoms (2d-PCOTP), a step in the standard Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery training suite, in which a specified circular area must be cut from a sheet of orthotropic tissue phantom. We describe the approach and physical experiments, which yielded a success rate of 96% for 50 trials of the 3d-DVTP subtask and 70% for 20 trials of the 2d-PCOTP subtask.
> 
> Authors:
> Adithyavairavan Murali, Siddarth Sen, Ben Kehoe, Animesh Garg, Seth McFarland, Sachin Patil, W. Douglas Boyd, Susan Lim, Pieter Abbeel, Ken Goldberg
> 
> Date: October 2014
> ...

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## Airicist

Robot-Assisted Surgery: Autonomous Tumor Localization and Extraction

Published on Jun 26, 2015




> Winner of Best Video Award at Hamlyn Surgical Robotics Symposium, London, June 2015
> 
> Autonomous Tumor Localization and Extraction: Palpation, Incision, Debridement and Adhesive Closure with the da Vinci Research Kit
> 
> Abstract:
> We are developing tooling and software that allows automation of subtasks for surgeons. Palpation of tissues remain a simple, yet important means by which surgeons verify the location of tumors to make precise incisions.
> We have created tooling and software a system to autonomously perform a multi-step surgical procedure? involving palpation, dissection, retraction debridement and adhesive closure in a silicone tissue phantom.
> 
> This video demonstrates a successful trial of the entire five-step procedure where human input is required only at four points to change tools? We also show failure modes of the current autonomous system and 
> ...

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