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Welcome to the da Vinci Research Kit wiki community

This wiki is home to users of the Research Kit for the da Vinci Surgical System.

The da Vinci Research Kit

The da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) is a collection of first-generation da Vinci components that can be used to assemble a research platform for exploring telerobotics in medicine. The idea behind this initiative is to provide the core hardware to a network of researchers worldwide, by repurposing retired clinical systems. This hardware is provided in combination with dedicated electronics to create a system that enables researchers to access to any level of the control system of the robot as well as the data streams within it.

Background

The da Vinci Research Kit research platform was developed through a collaboration between academic institutions, Johns Hopkins University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Intuitive Surgical Inc. in 2012. The introduction of the dVRK allowed research centers to share a common hardware platform without restricted access to the underlying back-and forward control system. This has led to a significant boost to the development of research in surgical robotics during the last decade and generated new opportunities for collaboration and to connect a surgical robot to other technologies. Today, the dVRK consortium includes mostly universities and academic centers within hospitals, and some companies.

Components

The Kit contains the following components:

• Two da Vinci Master Tool Manipulators (MTMs)
• Two da Vinci Patient Side Manipulators (PSMs)
• A stereo viewer
• A foot pedal tray
• Manipulator Interface Boards (dMIBs)
• Basic accessory kit

See the system in action on YouTube (credit: the JHU team).

MTM

PSM

Stereo Viewer

Foot Pedal Tray

Documentation

• Guide and Manuals
• Design and Implementation Topics
• PI and User Group Meetings

The User Group

University/Group	PI	PI URL	Group Wiki Page
North America
The Johns Hopkins University	Professor Russell Taylor	[1]	JHU Group Page
Worcester Polytechnic Institute	Professor Greg Fischer	[2]	WPI Group Page
Stanford University	Professor Allison Okamura	[3]	Stanford Group Page
The University of British Columbia	Professor Tim Salcudean	[4]	UBC Group Page
Vanderbilt University	Professor Nabil Simaan	[5]	Vanderbilt Group Page
	Assistant Professor Jie Ying Wu
University of California, Berkeley	Professor Pieter Abbeel Professor Ken Goldberg	[6] [7]	Berkeley Group Page
Carnegie Mellon University	Professor Howie Choset	[8]	CMU Group Page
Sick Kids Children's Hospital	Professor James Drake	[9]	Sick Kids Group Page
Clemson University	Professor Venkat Krovi	[10]	Clemson University
University of Western Ontario & CSTAR	Professor Rajni Patel	[11]	CSTAR Group Page
Wayne State University	Professor Abhilash Pandya	[12]	Wayne State University
Case Western Reserve University	Professor M. Cenk Cavusoglu Assistant Professor Zonghe Chua	[13] [14]	Case Western Reserve University
University of California San Diego	Assistant Professor Michael Yip	[15]	University of California San Diego
	Assistant Professor Tania Morimoto	[16]
University of Texas, Dallas	Professor Ann Majewicz Fey	[17]	University of Texas, Dallas
Purdue University	Professor Juan Wachs Professor Denny Yu	[18] [19]	Purdue University
University of Alberta	Professor Mahdi Tavakoli	[20]	University of Alberta
University of Texas at Austin	Assistant Professor Farshid Alambeigi	[21]	University of Texas at Austin
University of Illinois at Chicago	Professor Liaohai Leo Chen	[22]	University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Utah	Professor Alan Kuntz	[23]	University of Utah
New York University	Assistant Professor S. Farokh Atashzar	[24]	New York University
Europe
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna	Professor Arianna Menciassi	[25]	SSSA Group Page
Óbuda University	Professor Tamás Haidegger	[26]	Óbuda University
University of Verona	Professor Paolo Fiorini	[27]	University of Verona
Imperial College	Professor Guang-Zhong Yang	[28]	Imperial College
University College London	Professor Danail Stoyanov	[29]	University College London
University of Naples Federico II	Professor Bruno Siciliano	[30]	University of Naples Federico II
Politecnico di Milano	Professor Elena De Momi	[31]	Politecnico di Milano
University of Leeds	Professor Pietro Valdastri	[32]	University of Leeds
University of Innsbruck	Professor Yeongmi Kim Professor Matthias Harders	[33] [34]	University of Innsbruck
University of Reutlingen	Professor Oliver Burgert	[35]	University of Reutlingen
University of Twente	Professor Sarthak Misra	[36]	University of Twente
Asia
Seoul National University	Professor Sungwan Kim	[37]	Seoul National University
Ben Gurion University of the Negev	Professor Ilana Nisky	[38]	Ben Gurion University of the Negev
The Chinese University of Hong Kong	Professor Philip WY Chiu	[39]	The Chinese University of Hong Kong
	Associate Professor Samuel Au	[40]
Yonsei University	Professor Jongsoo Lee Professor Jongeun Choi	[41] [42]	Yonsei University

Publications

Publications associated with the use of dVRK currently online are more than 290. And this includes international conferences or journals, as well as publications related to workshops or symposiums, and open-access articles stored in arXiv. The published works range between many fields like automation, skill assessment and gesture recognition, hardware implementation and integration, system simulation and modelling, imaging and vision.

Here are listed some of the most interesting and up to date reviews where you can find most of the dVRK related articles:
2022

• Zejian Cui et al., "Caveats on the first-generation da Vinci Research Kit: latent technical constraints and essential calibrations"

2021

• C. D’Ettorre et al., "Accelerating Surgical Robotics Research: A Review of 10 Years With the da Vinci Research Kit" in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 56-78, Dec. 2021, doi: 10.1109/MRA.2021.3101646.

2020

• R. H. Taylor, P. Kazanzides, G. S. Fischer, and N. Simaan, “Medical robotics and computer-integrated interventional medicine,” in Biomedical Information Technology, Elsevier, 2020.
• A. Lasso and P. Kazanzides, “System integration,” in Handbook of Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, Elsevier, 2020.
• A. E. Abdelaal, P. Mathur, and S. E. Salcudean, “Robotics In Vivo: A Perspective on Human–Robot Interaction in Surgical Robotics,” Annu. Rev. Control. Robot. Auton. Syst., vol. 3, 2020.

2019

• R. Nagyné Elek and T. Haidegger, “Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgical Skill Assessment—Manual and Automated Platforms,” Acta Polytech. Hungarica, vol. 16, no. 8, 2019.
• T. D. Nagy and T. Haidegger, “Recent Advances in Robot-Assisted Surgery: Soft Tissue Contact Identification,” in 2019 IEEE 13th International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics (SACI), 2019.
• H. Nakawala et al., “Requirements elicitation for robotic and computer-assisted minimally invasive surgery,” Int. J. Adv. Robot. Syst., vol. 16, no. 4, 2019.
• T. Haidegger, “Autonomy for Surgical Robots: Concepts and Paradigms,” IEEE Trans. Med. Robot. Bionics, vol. 1, no. 2, 2019.
• F. Ficuciello, G. Tamburrini, A. Arezzo, L. Villani, and B. Siciliano, “Autonomy in surgical robots and its meaningful human control,” Paladyn, J. Behav. Robot., vol. 10, no. 1, 2019.
• S. O’Sullivan et al., “Legal, regulatory, and ethical frameworks for development of standards in artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous robotic surgery,” Int. J. Med. Robot. Comput. Assist. Surg., vol. 15, no. 1, 2019.
• L. Qian, J. Y. Wu, S. DiMaio, N. Navab, and P. Kazanzides, “A Review of Augmented Reality in Robotic-Assisted Surgery,” IEEE Trans. Med. Robot. Bionics, 2019.

2018

• M. Shahbazi, S. F. Atashzar, and R. V Patel, “A systematic review of multilateral teleoperation systems,” IEEE Trans. Haptics, vol. 11, no. 3, 2018.

2017

• T. Haidegger, “Surgical robots of the next decade: New trends and paradigms in the 21th century,” in 2017 IEEE 30th Neumann Colloquium (NC), 2017.

2016

• R. Elek, T. D. Nagy, D. Á. Nagy, G. Kronreif, I. J. Rudas, and T. Haidegger, “Recent trends in automating robotic surgery,” in 2016 IEEE 20th Jubilee International Conference on Intelligent Engineering Systems (INES), 2016.

2015

• Á. Takács et al., “Joint platforms and community efforts in surgical robotics research,” MACRo 2015, vol. 1, no. 1, 2015.

Frequently Asked Questions

• FAQ