This $8,538,979 Cooperative Agreement awarded by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Interior Business Center under the ARPA-H (CFDA 93.384) federal grant program aims to develop a full set of modular tools and logical frameworks for autonomous robotic surgery. The project is divided into seven core surgical tasks - retraction, resection, hemostasis, proprioception, debridement, palpation, and suturing. The recipient, Vanderbilt University, will create a system that allows the robot to progress through these tasks, assess its own uncertainty, and request human intervention when needed. The project includes two demonstrations of autonomous robotic surgery.
The award includes $1,077,000 in sub-awards to The Johns Hopkins University, University of Utah, and Virtuoso Surgical, Inc. to assist with tasks such as installing equipment, providing training, developing algorithms, and delivering surgical instrument prototypes. The sub-awards were made in January 2025 with completion dates ranging from December 2024 to September 2027, demonstrating the collaborative nature of this transformative research endeavor in advanced medical robotics.
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