Stereo Image-Based Arm Tracking for In Vivo Surgical Robotics

Motor-based tracking and image-based tracking are considered for three-dimensional in vivo tracking of the arms of a surgical robot during minimally invasive surgery. Accurate tracking is necessary for tele-medical applications and for the future automation of surgical procedures. An experiment is performed to compare the accuracy of the two methods, and results show that the positioning error of image-based tracking is significantly less than that of motor-based tracking.