MedRCT: A Medical Robotics Control and Teleoperation Framework
Radian Gondokaryono, Mustafa Haiderbhai, Thomas Looi, Lueder A. Kahrs
Summary
MedRCT is an open-source framework designed to streamline the development of teleoperation controllers for medical robotics. It introduces a modular and extensible architecture that decouples controller logic from hardware-specific dependencies, enabling seamless integration with diverse input devices, robotic manipulators, and simulators. Building on the principles of the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK), MedRCT generalizes its teleoperation controller into a Cartesian follower controller with standardized input/output interfaces. This abstraction allows researchers to reuse the same control logic across different platforms, such as dVRK and Franka Emika Panda, by simply swapping kinematic solver modules. The framework supports both intra- and interprocess communication, leveraging ROS for distributed setups while offering lightweight alternatives for time-critical tasks. Demonstrated use cases include teleoperation with multiple input devices, integration with physics-based simulators, and reinforcement learning agents for autonomous manipulation. By providing a unified, dependency-independent environment, MedRCT facilitates rapid prototyping and collaborative research in surgical robotics.
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BibTeX Citation
@incollection{GONDOKARYONO2026913, title = {54 - MedRCT: A Medical Robotics Control and Teleoperation Framework}, editor = {Mohammad Hossein Abedin-Nasab}, booktitle = {Handbook of Robotic and Image-Guided Surgery (Second Edition)}, publisher = {Elsevier}, edition = {Second Edition}, pages = {913-929}, year = {2026}, isbn = {978-0-443-13912-3}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-443-13912-3.00024-5}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780443139123000245}, author = {Radian Gondokaryono and Mustafa Haiderbhai and Thomas Looi and Lueder A. Kahrs}, keywords = {Robot teleoperation, controller, communication protocol, medical robotics}, abstract = {MedRCT, a medical robotics control and teleoperation framework, provides a modular architecture to assist researchers in their developments of new experimental surgical and interventional robot systems. It includes crucial features from the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) teleoperation, recent developments in assistive teleoperation research, and interprocess communication frameworks, to construct intuitive software modules that are easily reusable and extendable. We redefine the dVRK teleoperation controller as the Cartesian follower controller abstracted and defined with input and output interfaces to allow the controller to be used with a variety of input devices and a variety of output robot manipulators. We use this follower controller and create running examples for the dVRK robot and simulators by creating a dVRK analytical kinematics solver module and using the robot operating system as interprocess communication. Additionally, we show how the same Cartesian follower controller can be used with a Franka Emika Panda robot by only switching out the kinematics solver. Furthermore, we provide an example of how a reinforcement learning agent can serve as the input to control the dVRK robot to achieve a manipulation task. The open-source software is available through the project website: https://medcvr.utm.utoronto.ca/medrct.html.} }