Telesurgical robotic systems provide a well established form of assistance in the operating theater, with evidence of growing uptake in recent years. Until now, the da Vinci surgical system (Intuitive Surgical Inc, Sunnyvale, California) has been the most widely adopted robot of this kind, with more than 6,700 systems in current clinical use worldwide [1]. To accelerate research on robotic-assisted surgery, the retired first-generation da Vinci robots have been redeployed for research use as “da Vinci Research Kits” (dVRKs), which have been distributed to research institutions around the world to support both training and research in the sector. In the past ten years, a great amount of research on the dVRK has been carried out across a vast range of research topics. During this extensive and distributed process, common technical issues have been identified that are buried deep within the dVRK research and development architecture, and were found to be common among dVRK user feedback, regardless of the breadth and disparity of research directions identified.
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