Research on autonomous obstacle avoidance and automatic obstacle avoidance of minimally invasive surgical robots

Abstract. With the development of modern society, people pay more and more attention to health and safety, especially to the development of medical techniques. The demand for higher medical standards has led to minimally invasive surgery becoming a better choice for patients. Minimally invasive surgeries involve less trauma, lower blood loss, quicker recovery, and a lower risk of infection. However, compared to traditional surgeries, these surgeries demand higher precision and skill from the surgeons, making surgical robots the preferred tool for most minimally invasive operations. Surgical robots can eliminate the surgeon's hand tremors during the operation, enhance the precision of surgical operations, and offer greater flexibility with their small end size inside human organs. Despite these advantages, minimally invasive surgical robots can not avoid obstacles and plan the path of human organs and cavities in real-time. This paper reviews the dynamic path planning and real-time obstacle avoidance of modern minimally invasive surgical robots, including their development progress and research directions. It also introduces in detail the mainstream research methods of path planning and real-time obstacle avoidance in modern research. Finally, the current technical challenges and the prediction of the future research direction are pointed out and the reference suggestions are provided.