MOPS: A Modular and Open Platform for Surgical Robotics Research

MOPS is a platform for surgical robotics research. It consists of hardware and software components for building surgical robot systems based on existing robot arms. The reference system presented in this paper has two robot arms, each with an adapter for mounting and actuating different types of surgical instruments. Additionally, the system has a high-resolution stereo camera and a simple operator console with haptic devices and foot pedals for teleoperating the manipulators. Software components are based on Robot Operating System (ROS) to keep them modular and reusable for different types of hardware. We evaluate the precision of our system for vision-based tasks and demonstrate its potential for surgical task automation. The mean end-to-end error, including that of the vision system, for a trajectory following task was 1.2 mm / 0.3° for one manipulator and 2.7 mm / 0.7° for the other. MOPS software and hardware components are made available under an open-source license to encourage collaboration and facilitate the advancement of surgical robotics research.