# SutureBot: A Precision Framework & Benchmark For Autonomous End-to-End Suturing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20965 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20965/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [π0: A Vision-Language-Action Flow Model for General Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24164/) (2024)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16054/) (2025)
- [Fine-Tuning Vision-Language-Action Models: Optimizing Speed and Success](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19645/) (2025)
- [RoboPoint: A Vision-Language Model for Spatial Affordance Prediction for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10721/) (2024)
- [Hi Robot: Open-Ended Instruction Following with Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19417/) (2025)
- [Yell At Your Robot: Improving On-the-Fly from Language Corrections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12910/) (2024)
- [Surgical Robot Transformer (SRT): Imitation Learning for Surgical Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12998/) (2024)
- [SRT-H: A Hierarchical Framework for Autonomous Surgery via Language Conditioned Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10251/) (2025)
- [Bimanual Regrasping for Suture Needles using Reinforcement Learning for Rapid Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04813/) (2020)
- [SurgPose: a Dataset for Articulated Robotic Surgical Tool Pose Estimation and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11534/) (2025)
- [Learning to Localize, Grasp, and Hand Over Unmodified Surgical Needles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04071/) (2021)
- [AimBot: A Simple Auxiliary Visual Cue to Enhance Spatial Awareness of Visuomotor Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08113/) (2025)
- [A surgical dataset from the da Vinci Research Kit for task automation and recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.03643/) (2021)
- [SurgicAI: A Hierarchical Platform for Fine-Grained Surgical Policy Learning and Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13865/) (2024)
- [Autonomous Vision-Guided Resection of Central Airway Obstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18586/) (2025)
- [End-to-End Learning of Deep Visuomotor Policy for Needle Picking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03675/) (2023)
- [STITCH: Augmented Dexterity for Suture Throws Including Thread Coordination and Handoffs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05151/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Failure Detection for Surgical Robot Imitation Policies via Flow-Matching World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.27511/) (2026)
- [Supervised Mixture-of-Experts for Surgical Grasping and Retraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21971/) (2026)
- [Strategy-Supervised Autonomous Laparoscopic Camera Control via Event-Driven Graph Mining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20500/) (2026)
- [Imitation Learning for Robot Assistance in Open Surgery: A Multi-Policy Evaluation on Suture Following](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28736/) (2026)
- [Multi-modal Representation Fusion for Long-term Microsurgical Anastomosis Trajectory Anticipation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14492/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Robotic suturing is a prototypical long-horizon dexterous manipulation task, requiring coordinated needle grasping, precise tissue penetration, and secure knot tying. Despite numerous efforts toward end-to-end autonomy, a fully autonomous suturing pipeline has yet to be demonstrated on physical hardware. We introduce SutureBot: an autonomous suturing benchmark on the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK), spanning needle pickup, tissue insertion, and knot tying. To ensure repeatability, we release a high-fidelity dataset comprising 1,890 suturing demonstrations. Furthermore, we propose a goal-conditioned framework that explicitly optimizes insertion-point precision, improving targeting accuracy by 59%-74% over a task-only baseline. To establish this task as a benchmark for dexterous imitation learning, we evaluate state-of-the-art vision-language-action (VLA) models, including π0, GR00T N1, OpenVLA-OFT, and multitask ACT, each augmented with a high-level task-prediction policy. Autonomous suturing is a key milestone toward achieving robotic autonomy in surgery. These contributions support reproducible evaluation and development of precision-focused, long-horizon dexterous manipulation policies necessary for end-to-end suturing. Dataset is available at: https://huggingface.co/datasets/jchen396/suturebot