Abstract
Rapid advances in humanoid robotics have motivated growing interest in the application of humanoids for healthcare and clinical tasks. However, it remains unclear how close contemporary humanoids are to meeting the kinematic demands of robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery. In this work, we address the question of optimal robot positioning through a quantitative analysis of workspace and robot setup configurations. We present a capability-map-based robot setup framework that optimizes humanoid base placement and tool mounting orientation to maximize bimanual humanoid reachability while accounting for tool-tip kinematics and remote-center-of-motion (RCM) constraints. We evaluate three humanoid platforms spanning different body dimensions and kinematic redundancy on workspace reachability for three representative general surgery procedures: cholecystectomy, inguinal hernia repair, and sleeve gastrectomy. The proposed joint optimization of base placement and tool mounting consistently outperforms base-only optimization and heuristic baselines. For cholecystectomy and inguinal hernia repair, which are characterized by relatively small and minimally overlapping workspaces, humanoid reachability approached 90%. For the larger, overlapping multi-port arm workspace of sleeve gastrectomy, humanoids yield substantially lower coverage. These results quantify the near-term promise of humanoids for selected laparoscopic procedures and clarify key limitations that must be addressed for broader deployment.
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- Open access
- Green open access
Cite this article
APA 7
Zhang, P., Liang, Z., Richter, F., Thareja, N., Broderick, R., Liu, S., & Yip, M. (2026). Humanoids for Robot-Assisted Surgery: Bimanual Base Placement and Tool-Mount Optimization via Capability Maps. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/humanoids-for-robot-assisted-surgery-bimanual-base-placement-and-tool-mount-optimization-via-capability-maps
MLA 9
Zhang, Peihan, et al. "Humanoids for Robot-Assisted Surgery: Bimanual Base Placement and Tool-Mount Optimization via Capability Maps." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/humanoids-for-robot-assisted-surgery-bimanual-base-placement-and-tool-mount-optimization-via-capability-maps.
Chicago (author–date)
Zhang, Peihan, Zekai Liang, Florian Richter, Nikita Thareja, Ryan Broderick, Shanglei Liu, and Michael Yip. 2026. "Humanoids for Robot-Assisted Surgery: Bimanual Base Placement and Tool-Mount Optimization via Capability Maps." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/humanoids-for-robot-assisted-surgery-bimanual-base-placement-and-tool-mount-optimization-via-capability-maps.
Harvard
Zhang, P., Liang, Z., Richter, F., Thareja, N., Broderick, R., Liu, S. and Yip, M. (2026) 'Humanoids for Robot-Assisted Surgery: Bimanual Base Placement and Tool-Mount Optimization via Capability Maps', Available at: https://omanscience.com/en/articles/humanoids-for-robot-assisted-surgery-bimanual-base-placement-and-tool-mount-optimization-via-capability-maps.
Vancouver
Zhang P, Liang Z, Richter F, Thareja N, Broderick R, Liu S, et al. Humanoids for Robot-Assisted Surgery: Bimanual Base Placement and Tool-Mount Optimization via Capability Maps. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/humanoids-for-robot-assisted-surgery-bimanual-base-placement-and-tool-mount-optimization-via-capability-maps
IEEE
P. Zhang, Z. Liang, F. Richter, N. Thareja, R. Broderick, S. Liu, and M. Yip, "Humanoids for Robot-Assisted Surgery: Bimanual Base Placement and Tool-Mount Optimization via Capability Maps," https://omanscience.com/en/articles/humanoids-for-robot-assisted-surgery-bimanual-base-placement-and-tool-mount-optimization-via-capability-maps.