ICRA 2026 Competition: AI for Robotic Surgery

Surgical robotics is entering an exciting new era where the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) promises to improve the performance of human surgeons, and to address the growing shortage of surgeons and other medical personnel, thereby improving healthcare for all.

The most prevalent surgical robot in operating rooms today is the da Vinci Surgical System (Intuitive Surgical, Sunnyvale, CA), which has an installed base of more than 10,000 systems. The competition will use the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK), an open-source research platform that re-purposes the mechanical hardware from retired clinical da Vinci Surgical Systems.

Challenges

We will have two challenges, both using the peg transfer task. In this task, the user picks up a peg from a post (with the non-dominant hand) and transfers it to another post, often with an intervening handoff between the left and right instruments without dropping the peg. This task (originating from the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery) is widely used in robotic surgery training to improve robotic manipulation skills, but is simple enough that anyone can learn it.

  1. Human teleoperated peg transfer: the competitor uses an input device to teleoperate a real or simulated dVRK to transfer as many pegs as possible within the time limit.

  2. Autonomous peg transfer: the competitor (or team) provides an AI algorithm to move a real or simulated dVRK to transfer as many pegs as possible within the time limit.

News

November 16, 2025: Website created

Timeline

TBA

Awards

TBA

Contact

To contact the organizers by email: accelnet-robotics-challenge-admin@googlegroups.com

Acknowledgments

NSF Logo Development of this Surgical Robotics Challenge is supported by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) via OISE-1927354 and OISE-1927275, AccelNet: International Collaboration to Accelerate Research in Robotic Surgery.