Yafei Ou

University of Alberta | UAlberta · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Robot-assisted arthroscopic surgery has been increasingly receiving attention in orthopedic surgery. To build a robot-assisted system, dynamic uncertainties can be a critical issue that could bring robot performance inaccuracy or even system instability if cannot be appropriately compensated. Disturbance observer is a common tool to be used for dis...

Recent applications of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) in surgical autonomy have shown promising results in automating various surgical sub-tasks. While most of these studies consider the rigid and soft body dynamics in the surgery such as tissue deformation, only a few have investigated the situation where fluid is present. However, the presence...

Recent studies in surgical robotics have focused on automating common surgical subtasks such as grasping and manipulation using deep reinforcement learning (DRL). In this work, we consider surgical endoscopic camera control for object tracking-e.g., using the endoscopic camera manipulator (ECM) from the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) (Intuitive Inc.,...

Indirect simultaneous positioning (ISP), where internal tissue points are placed at desired locations indirectly through the manipulation of boundary points, is a type of subtask frequently performed in robotic surgeries. Although challenging due to complex tissue dynamics, automating the task can potentially reduce the workload of surgeons. This p...

Recent research in surgical robotics has focused on increasing the level of autonomy in order to reduce the workload of surgeons. While deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has shown promising results in automating some surgical subtasks, due to its demand for a large number of random explorations, safety and learning efficiency remain the primary cha...