Integration of a Surgical Robotic Co-worker in an Endoscopic Neurosurgical Assistance Platform

Endonasal Endoscopic Approach (EEA) is a minimally invasive technique for interventions in the skull base in which specific surgical tools and an endoscope are introduced directly through the nose and sinuses. This approach avoids scars in the patients face and reduces the recovering time compared with other techniques. However, it requires expertise and high accuracy movements, since in the operating area there are critical anatomical structures as well as displacements of the brain matter due to the change of the internal pressure during the craniotomy (brain-shift). The CRANEEAL proposal addresses the problem of developing a co-worker robotic system for minimally invasive neurosurgery, under a learning cognitive scheme. The system will provide assistance to the neurosurgeon with automatic, collaborative or shared-control behaviors, as well as providing an augmented reality environment. In this contribution we present the project fundamentals, with special detail in the functional and integration aspects of the surgical co-worker robot that provides autonomous assistance to the surgeon during the intervention.