  Robotic surgery and novel surgical instrumentation present great potentials
towards safer, more accurate and consistent minimally invasive surgery.
However, their adoption is dependent to the access to training facilities and
extensive surgical training. Robotic instruments require different dexterity
skills compared to open or laparoscopic. Surgeons, therefore, are required to
invest significant time by attending extensive training programs. Contrary,
hands on experiences represent an additional operational cost for hospitals as
the availability of robotic systems for training purposes is limited. All these
technological and financial barriers for surgeons and hospitals hinder the
adoption of robotic surgery. In this paper, we present a mobile dexterity
training kit to develop basic surgical techniques within an affordable setting.
The system could be used to train basic surgical gestures and to develop the
motor skills needed for manoeuvring robotic instruments. Our work presents the
architecture and components needed to create a simulated environment for
training sub-tasks as well as a design for portable mobile manipulators that
can be used as master controllers of different instruments. A preliminary study
results demonstrate usability and skills development with this system.
