Tavakoli M, Aziminejad A, Patel R V, Moallem M
Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics, London Health Sciences Centre, London, Ontario, N6A 5A5, Canada.
Surg Endosc. 2006 Oct;20(10):1570-9. doi: 10.1007/s00464-005-0582-y. Epub 2006 Aug 7.
Providing a surgeon with information regarding contacts made between instruments and tissue during robot-assisted interventions can improve task efficiency and reliability. In this report, different methods for feedback of such information to the surgeon are discussed. It is hypothesized that various methods of contact feedback have the potential to enhance performance in a robot-assisted minimally invasive environment. To verify the hypothesis, novel mechanisms needed for incorporating contact feedback were designed, including a surgeon-robot interface with full force feedback capabilities and a surgical end-effector with full force sensing capabilities, that are suitable for minimally invasive applications. These two mechanisms were used to form a robotic "master-slave" test bed for studying the effect of contact feedback on the system and user performance. Using the master-slave system, experiments for surgical tasks involving soft tissue palpation were conducted. The performance of the master-slave system was validated in terms of criteria that assess the accurate transmission of task-related information to the surgeon, which is critical in the context of soft tissue surgical applications. Moreover, using a set of experiments involving human subjects, the performance of several users in carrying out the task was compared among different methods of contact feedback.
为外科医生提供有关机器人辅助手术中器械与组织之间接触情况的信息，可以提高任务效率和可靠性。在本报告中，讨论了向外科医生反馈此类信息的不同方法。据推测，各种接触反馈方法有可能在机器人辅助的微创环境中提高手术表现。为验证这一推测，设计了纳入接触反馈所需的新型机制，包括具有全力反馈功能的外科医生-机器人接口和具有全力传感功能的手术末端执行器，这些适用于微创应用。这两种机制被用于构建一个机器人“主-从”测试平台，以研究接触反馈对系统和用户表现的影响。利用主-从系统，针对涉及软组织触诊的手术任务进行了实验。主-从系统的性能根据评估任务相关信息向外科医生准确传输的标准进行了验证，这在软组织手术应用中至关重要。此外，通过一组涉及人类受试者的实验，比较了不同接触反馈方法下几名用户执行任务的表现。
