This paper describes the implementation of a heart motion compensation system on the da Vinci surgical system (Intuitive Surgical Inc.) for coronary artery bypass surgery. By introducing a robot-assisted solution, this surgery could be performed completely minimally invasively and on a beating heart. In this work we describe the development of open loop controllers based on spectral line decomposition and the assumption of a periodic trajectory. This allows the da Vinci patient-side manipulators to track an actual heart trajectory with sub-millimetre error. Further, to simulate a virtually stabilized environment, we present the novel concept of maintaining the camera fixed relative to the heart target, effectively decoupling the vision tracking and arm tracking challenges. Finally, we executed preliminary experiments to evaluate surgeons' ability to perform simulated suturing and peg transfer tasks on a moving target. Performance for the simulated suturing was evaluated based on task completion time, accuracy of needle placement, and number of errors. For the suture task, the number of missed targets decreased from 37% to 13% when compensation was enabled, the number of hit targets increased from 26% to 41%, and completion time decreased. For the peg transfer tasks, again completion time and number of errors were measured. Though the margin for error was larger, there was less perceived difficulty of the task when compensation was enabled.

Presents the design of a cardiac tissue stabilizing device with fixating surgical arm, developed for open-heart cardiac surgery to stabilize anastomosis sites during off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting surgeries. The stabilization device is a "C"-shaped hollow ring that holds the heart using vacuum pressure. The arm is a seven link, 18-DOF, redundant, passive, serial linkage. As it attaches directly to the patient on the chest retractor, the arm has a stable mechanical ground protecting the patient from injury should they move during surgery. Measured forces and torques from two pigs' hearts were scaled to human magnitudes to determine stabilizer lifting and arm braking requirements.