As described in Part I, the Lapabot was developed considering telesurgery from the initial design stage. The robot configuration is based on the master-slave structure in which the operator can be separated spatially from the patient. The distributed control architecture communicating through high-speed network enables remote control of surgical robot manipulators. In this work, we added network communication modules using user datagram protocol/internet protocol for implementation of the telesurgical system. For a stable network environment, a dedicated research network was adopted. To characterize the network environment, a data packet sender and a repeater whose packet length and packet structure are similar to those of the real data packet were developed. The developed system was evaluated through in-vitro and in-vivo experiments. With the developed system, we have successfully performed remote control of the Lapabot. The roundtrip time delay for the control signal ranged from 1.4 to 4.1 ms. The total time delay for the operator including image signal acquisition and transmission delays was under 333 ms. It did not impede surgical procedures. Initial evaluation results demonstrate the feasibility of the developed telesurgical system.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.