Autonomous Robotic Surgical Systems: Needing Common Sense to Achieve Higher Levels of Autonomy

While executing a surgical procedure, surgeons do not only rely on their specific medical knowledge, but also on a set of skills that are “obvious” to them and allow to intuitively evaluate and react to the intervention evolution. Such skills belong to what is usually called commonsense. Understanding how to describe, represent and learn this knowledge is paramount to develop robust and reliable Autonomous Robotic Surgical Systems (ARSS). Despite being already discussed in other fields, to the best of our knowledge the importance and challenges of commonsense in robotic surgery have not been addressed yet. This column proposes a partition of common sense in categories that could simplify the acquisition and use of this type of knowledge, and invites comments to fill the scientific and technological gaps related to commonsense knowledge and reasoning.