  Realistic real-time surgical simulators play an increasingly important role
in surgical robotics research, such as surgical robot learning and automation,
and surgical skills assessment. Although there are a number of existing
surgical simulators for research, they generally lack the ability to simulate
the diverse types of objects and contact-rich manipulation tasks typically
present in surgeries, such as tissue cutting and blood suction. In this work,
we introduce CRESSim, a realistic surgical simulator based on PhysX 5 for the
da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) that enables simulating various contact-rich
surgical tasks involving different surgical instruments, soft tissue, and body
fluids. The real-world dVRK console and the master tool manipulator (MTM)
robots are incorporated into the system to allow for teleoperation through
virtual reality (VR). To showcase the advantages and potentials of the
simulator, we present three examples of surgical tasks, including tissue
grasping and deformation, blood suction, and tissue cutting. These tasks are
performed using the simulated surgical instruments, including the large needle
driver, suction irrigator, and curved scissor, through VR-based teleoperation.
