Human-guided surgical robot system for spinal fusion surgery: CoRASS

Abstract

There are two main limitations in the conventional robot-assisted spinal fusion surgery. Since the end effector in the state of art has a role of guiding the insertion pose of a screw only, i) convenience that can be obtained when the robot intervenes in the surgery more actively could be limited. ii) The insertion pose of a screw provided by the robots could be deteriorated by surgeon's resisting force since he should insert a screw with his own hand withstanding the large reaction force transmitted through the drilling handle. To overcome those limitations, this paper proposes a novel approach for spinal fusion, wherein the robot performs the spinal fusion using the equipped end effector following surgeon's guide. We developed a dexterous small-sized the end effector that can perform previous gimleting and screwing tasks into the vertebrae. A five-DOF robot body that has kinematically-closed structure guides the insertion pose of a screw and resists strong reaction force firmly during the screwing process. Based on admittance control framework, the surgeon controls the pose of the end effector precisely to compensate induced static/dynamic errors during the operation. A torque feedback method without torque sensor that suggests the haptic information about the status of drilling is also included. The performance of the CoRASS was verified by experiments.

Otorob (Ortho Robot) with Docmata (Doctor's Eye): Role of Remote Presence in Developing Countries

“…However, this is expensive in terms of both equipment and energy consumption [3]. The vision system is the backbone for many 'state of the art' robotic systems [35]. Currently robotics vision acts as a sensor for the robot to identify the position and orientation of the target object but not to visualize the patient overall.…”

A device mimicking the biomechanical characteristics of crocodile skull for lumbar fracture reduction

“…The complement of minimally invasive percutaneous posterior lumbar interbody fusion [15] and MIS transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MIS-TLIF) [16] have made a breakthrough in the treatment of spinal fractures. Some MIS devices, like the 'pine Assist' system, SPINEBOT [17] and CoRass [18], have emerged recently. However, they may be still contraindicated for the treatment of lumbar burst fractures due to their limitations in resetting the bone fragments retropulsed into the spinal canal and achieving decompression.…”