A modular force‐controlled robotic instrument for minimally invasive surgery – efficacy for being used in autonomous grasping against a variable pull force

Abstract

With a simple and practical design, the instrument enjoys affordability, versatility and autoclave sterilizability for clinical usage, with an acceptable performance for being used in an auto-grasping control scheme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Feasibility of infrared tracking of beating heart motion for robotic assisted beating heart surgery

“…With such achievement in heart motion tracking, and parallel advancements in other related fields, e.g. sophisticated surgical tools, 37 haptics, 38 and autonomous surgery actions 39,40 one might conclude that RAFBHS is near to being realized.…”

An extended algorithm for autonomous grasping of soft tissues during robotic surgery

“…An alternative recently proposed scheme for force control of the grasping task in MIRS is autonomous grasping or “auto‐grasping.” Tissue auto‐grasping means automatic adjustment of the pinch forces which are applied to the tissue in accordance with the pull forces, such that an effective and safe grasp, that is, no slippage and tissue damage, is achieved 18,19 . This control scheme seems attractive from a practical point of view, since it does not need a direct contribution from the surgeon; he/she can focus on the main surgical task, for example, cutting, suturing, and so on, rather than grasping/retracting the tissue which is often an axillary subtask for viewing and accessing the surgical site.…”

“…In their study, the actuation force of the instrument was controlled such that the pinch forces, measured by strain gages attached to jaws, were high enough to avoid tissue slippage. Also, Khadem et al 18,19 implemented the auto‐grasping scheme on a robotic instrument by a proportional integral derivative (PID) controller. They identified the safe and effective pinch force, in accordance with the pull force magnitude, from on an experimentally obtained three‐zone grasp model which included damage, slip, and safe grasping zones.…”

“…A major limitation of the previous works on auto‐grasping control scheme is the fact that the pull forces were assumed to be exerted only along the direction of the instrument's shaft 18‐21 . Obviously, in such condition, which is quite rare in actual surgery, the tool‐tissue interactions under the jaws are symmetrical.…”

Surgical audio information as base for haptic feedback in robotic-assisted procedures

“…This imposes serious design limitations for fulfilling clinical requirements. Sensor technology can also be integrated into instruments for indirect force measurements, for example, on the shaft of the instrument [5,6]. However, these measurements can only be used for extracting static one-point information, and for palpation purposes, dynamic information acquisition is required.…”