Experimental test-bed for research on teleoperated surgical robotic systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The equipment requested is for lab use as a general-purpose experimental test-bed for research on restoring haptic feedback (sense of touch) to the surgeon during robot-assisted surgery and therapy. In robotic/telerobotic applications that deal with a delicate and sensitive environment such as in soft-tissue surgeries, it is important to provide haptic feedback about robot/environment contact forces to the operator's hand in order to enable the operator to better control such contact forces. The absence of haptic feedback to the surgeon in the current surgical systems is both a safety concern and a cause of errors. For instance, in a study on minimally invasive cholecystectomy, it has been observed that inappropriate and excessive application of force was a main cause of perforation of the gall bladder -- we hypothesize that providing haptic feedback to the surgeon is what is needed to mitigate such complications. The proposed research focuses on various aspects of developing a satisfactory solution to the problem of lack of haptic feedback in robot-assisted surgical and telesurgical systems. In addition, the requested equipment will be used for research on robot-assisted beating heart surgery. Unlike arrested-heart surgery, beating heart surgery does not involve cardiopulmonary bypass, which has been found responsible for complications such as long-term cognitive loss and longer recovery time. For beating heart surgery to become possible, the key idea which we will be working on is to control the surgical robot and the camera to always follow the heart movements -- the beating heart will then seem steady to the surgeon. The proposed experimental test-bed includes two Phantom Premium 1.5A devices to be used as our haptics-capable user interface and as our (surgical) robot. A force sensor for measuring robot/environment contact forces and torques, three computers for robot control and communication purposes, and a software package for simulating network impairments such as time delay and information loss are also requested. The proposed equipment will enable me to train my graduate students in key areas pertaining to the development of innovative state-of-the-art technologies for surgery and telesurgery, which hold great promise for Canada.