Towards a cognitive camera robotic assistant

This paper presents a cognitive architecture for a camera robotic assistant aimed at providing the proper camera view of the operating area in an autonomous way. The robotic system is composed of a miniature camera robot and an external robotic arm. The camera robot is introduced into the abdominal cavity and handled by the external robot through magnetic interaction. The cognitive architecture is provided with a long-term memory, which stores surgical knowledge, behaviors of the camera and learning mechanisms, and a short-term memory that recognizes the actual state of the task and triggers the corresponding camera behavior. To provide the proper camera view, each state of the task is characterized by a Focus of Attention (FOA), defined by an object, a position of the object in the image, and a zoom factor. The architecture also includes a learning mechanism to take into account particular preferences of surgeons concerning the viewpoint of the scene. The architecture proposed is validated through a set of in-vitro experiments.