• The da Vinci
    Research Kit

About the dVRK Community

The da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) is a global research community advancing innovation in telerobotic and robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery. Supported by the Intuitive Foundation, the dVRK enables researchers to repurpose hardware from retired da Vinci Surgical Systems, from Intuitive, to build customizable research platforms for non-clinical investigation and development.

The dVRK community spans more than 50 universities across 10 countries, bringing together multidisciplinary teams of engineers, computer scientists, and clinicians to explore the future of surgical technology.

Accelerating Research and Collaboration

By providing access to a common research platform, the dVRK helps researchers collaborate, share knowledge, and build upon each other’s work. Research areas include:

  • Image- and information-guided surgery
  • Novel surgical instruments and tools
  • Advanced surgeon interfaces
  • Robotic-assisted surgical technologies
  • Surgical automation and autonomy
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning applications

A Flexible Research Platform

The dVRK includes several core elements of a robot-assisted surgical system, including:

  • Instrument manipulators
  • Stereo visualization systems
  • Hand controllers
  • Foot-pedal interfaces

These components can be integrated and customized to support a wide range of research objectives and experimental system designs.

Built for Innovation

The dVRK is not a turnkey surgical system. Instead, it provides a set of modular building blocks that allow research teams to design, develop, and evaluate new concepts in surgical robotics. This flexibility has made the dVRK a valuable platform for advancing ideas from the laboratory toward real-world clinical impact.

By providing engineering students with a platform to learn, explore, and innovate, the Intuitive Foundation helps expand access to advanced research tools, fosters cross-institutional collaboration, and accelerates the development of the next generation of surgical technologies.

There are currently two dVRK community wiki sites:

Eligibility, Conditions, and Application Guidelines

Eligibility and Conditions:

  • Non-profit education and research institutions are eligible to apply for dVRK hardware and support.
  • Hardware may not be available in all geographic regions, due to import restrictions.
  • Donated equipment is “Not for Clinical Use” and must not be placed in a hospital operating room for use with human patients.
  • Grantees agree to keep donated hardware at the awarded institution unless authorized in writing to move the hardware to a new institution.
  • The research team should possess hardware and software engineering capabilities and clinical review for applicability/appropriateness  as well as resources to build and maintain a complex research platform.
  • The program prioritizes teams with a demonstrated track record of leveraging and contributing to shared resources and open-source communities.
  • Grantees agree in good faith to participate in annual principal investigator meetings and community events. These are typically hosted at popular robotics conferences.

Getting Started

Tell us more about your project, so that we can help you to determine if the dVRK is the right research platform for you.  If your submitted application fits the criteria, the next step is getting the dVRK hardware. With the hardware comes the instructions to help you to set up and maintain your dVRK.

Get controller electronics. The controller design is open source, so you can build this yourself, or purchase pre-built hardware.

https://dvrk.readthedocs.io/main/pages/kit/from_JHU.html

Go to GitHub for instructions on setting up a host PC, on compiling software, and for developing custom applications on top of a common open-source software framework.

https://github.com/jhu-dvrk/sawIntuitiveResearchKit/wiki

Contribute back! The community thrives on collaboration, shared code, tips and tricks, and peer-to-peer support.

Please email dvrk@intuitive-foundation.org with questions regarding the application process.

SUBMIT APPLICATION ONLINE
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