Towards a Touchless Master Console for Natural Interactions in Sterilized and Cognitive Robotic Surgery Environments

With the increasing benefits of minimally invasive surgery (MIS), computer assisted surgical systems are widely used to handle the challenges of sterilization, augmented reality, intracorporeal accessibility, dexterity in confined space and precision demanded in MIS. In conventional surgical environments, the sterilized objects in the surgical space are manipulated either manually or by tele-operated master-and-slave system. One of the challenges faced in this kind of manipulation is the physical controls can present risks of non-sterile contact for surgeons in a highly sterilized operating room. Gesture recognition has been widely researched as a Natural User Interface (NUI) for human-computer and human-robot interactions. This paper focuses on assessing the feasibility of using skeletal tracking as a touchless control interface for the master consoles of master-and-slave surgical robotic systems. A demonstration system that uses one RGB-D sensor is set up for the purpose of the assessment.