Paul M. Khoury

Robotic Scrub Nurse

This project focuses on developing and evaluating a robotic scrub nurse system to assist surgeons by autonomously handling and passing surgical instruments. The system is being built on the OARBot platform and aims to replicate key scrub nurse responsibilities, including instrument localization, grasping, handoff, and return to tray, while adapting to surgeon preferences and operating room workflows. The long-term goal is to improve efficiency, reduce cognitive load on human staff, and enhance safety during surgical procedures.

The work includes close collaboration with practicing surgeons to observe real operating room workflows and translate these observations into user needs and system requirements. The team is designing and testing custom end-effectors (including soft and suction-based concepts) to reliably grasp a wide variety of surgical tools. Computer vision is being integrated to detect and localize instruments on trays, determine optimal grasp points, and enable controlled pick-and-place actions.

Progress to date includes instrument research and measurement, gripper integration and testing, ROS/Linux system setup, and preliminary pickup and handoff experiments. The project also includes a comprehensive literature and patent survey of prior robotic scrub nurse systems, identifying limitations such as difficulty with overlapping instruments, dynamic surgical situations, and natural language variability.

Paul and Angelika coordinated with Dr. Kim’s team at the University at Buffalo to observe live surgical procedures in February 2026. This clinical observation provides direct insight into real operating room workflows, instrument handling, and surgeon preferences to inform system requirements and design of the robotic scrub nurse.