The development of the Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (RAMIS) imposes an increasing demand for surgical training platforms, especially low-cost simulationbased surgical training through the creation of new open-source modules. For this goal, a da Vinci Surgical robot simulator based on Unity Physics Engine is developed. The simulator is integrated with da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK), robot kinematic models and multiple sensors. The Robot Operating System (ROS) interface is embedded for better integration with ROS based software components. The simulator can provide interactive information such as haptic feedback with master input devices. An application of a virtual fixture is implemented to test and verify the performance of the simulator. The results show that the simulator has high expansibility and support interactive training tasks well.

Robot-assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) requires the surgeon to alternatively control both the surgical instruments and the endoscopic camera, or to leave this burden to an assistant. This increases the cognitive load and interrupts the workflow of the operation. Camera motion automation has been examined in the literature to mitigate these aspects, but still lacks situation awareness, a key factor for camera navigation enhancement. This paper presents the development of a phase-specific camera motion automation, implemented in Virtual Reality (VR) during a suturing task. A user study involving 10 users was carried out using the master console of the da Vinci Research Kit. Each subject performed the suturing task undergoing both the proposed autonomous camera motion and the traditional manual camera control. Results show that the proposed system can reduce operational time, decreasing both the user's mental and physical demand. Situational awareness is shown to be fundamental in exploiting the benefits introduced by camera motion automation.