When we are doing these surgeries we actually have to tilt patients' heads down in order to access their pelvis. The anesthesiologist is trying to ventilate the patients lungs, we're trying to expand their belly with gas so that we can see into their pelvis. When someone has obesity this can add a whole lot of extra weight or pressure on what the anesthesiologist is trying to do.
With robotic surgery, the robot has the ability to actually lift up the abdominal wall so that we can lower our gas pressure inside the abdomen to take a lot of pressure off the lungs. Compared to conventional laparoscopy, robotics is 3-D rather than 2-D, so we have much better visualization at the time of surgery. The robot also has articulating arms, so instead of only being able to move your instrument in two directions, you actually have a full 360° of rotation. This can be especially helpful when working deep in the pelvis.
These are some of the things that make robotic surgery better for patients with obesity. We did a study looking at the literature and found that conversion to the big up-and-down incision was lower for obesity-related reasons when the robot was used compared to conventional laparoscopy.