Methods and mechanisms for contact feedback in a robot-assisted minimally invasive environment

Abstract

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.

Air-cushion force sensitive probe for soft tissue investigation during minimally invasive surgery

“…Another major problem involves the constraint movements of the surgical tools imposed by the insertion port. These limit the tools' movements to only four degree-of-freedoms (pitch, yaw, roll and insertion [5]) and cause the fulcrum effects to reverse the directions of the tools at their tips.…”

Haptics in Robot-Assisted Surgery: Challenges and Benefits

“…They report that the user performance of robotassisted suture tying aided by visual feedback or combined auditory-visual feedback sensory substitution was comparable and even superior to performances of tying directly with hands. Similarly, Akinbiyi et al [167] report a decrease in the number of broken sutures in a phantom knot tying task, and Tavakoli et al [168] report better localization accuracy for a lump localization task when force levels were visually communicated to the operator. While providing visual or auditory feedbacks are shown to enhance performance in such simple tasks, it must be noted that they may not be as effective for complex tasks due to perceptive and cognitive overload [169].…”

Adaptive Control of Teleoperation Systems With Linearly and Nonlinearly Parameterized Dynamic Uncertainties

“…have been widely applied in areas such as outer space and undersea exploration [1][2] control of construction/forestry machines of the excavator type [3], minimally invasive telesurgery [4], nuclear waste site and radioactive material management [5], and so on.…”