What is it about?
Most research on robots in surgery focuses on the robot itself, its precision and technical performance. But robots don't operate alone. This doctoral project goes inside real hospital operating theatres to observe how entire surgical teams, surgeons, nurses, and robotic specialists, work together during robot-assisted knee and hip surgeries. By watching, interviewing, and analysing real procedures, we found that effective collaboration isn't just about the human and the robot; it's about how the whole team coordinates, communicates, and adapts together in the moment. These insights can help design robotic systems that genuinely support the people who use them.
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Photo by Olivier Gerbault on Unsplash
Why is it important?
What makes this work distinctive is that it studies collaboration as it actually happens, in live surgeries, rather than in simplified lab settings. Much existing research treats human-robot collaboration as a one-to-one relationship, missing the complexity of real clinical teamwork. By following a full doctoral research programme across video analysis, expert interviews, and direct observation, this project builds a socio-technical grounded theory of how surgical teams truly function with robots. As robotic systems become more common in hospitals worldwide, understanding the human side of that equation is not just timely; it is essential for making these technologies work safely and effectively in practice.
Perspectives
This publication marks a meaningful milestone in my doctoral journey. Being selected for HRI Pioneers was a genuinely exciting moment, as the workshop brings together some of the brightest student researchers in human-robot interaction from around the world, and being counted among them was both humbling and energising. For me, this work is deeply personal. Gaining access to real operating theatres, standing alongside surgical teams during live procedures, and being trusted with that environment were privileges I do not take lightly. What drives me is a conviction that the people working alongside robots matter just as much as the robots themselves, and that good research has to start with understanding real work in real settings. I hope this project contributes not just to academic knowledge, but to making robotic systems in surgery more human, more considered, and more supportive of the teams who depend on them every day.
Jasper Vermeulen
Queensland University of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Understanding the Human(s) in Human-Robot Collaboration: A Case Study on Robot-Assisted Surgeries in the Wild, March 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3776734.3794622.
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