Experimental test-bed for research on teleoperated surgical robotic systems

所要求的设备是作为实验室使用的通用实验试验台，用于研究在机器人辅助手术和治疗期间恢复外科医生的触觉反馈（触觉）。在处理微妙和敏感环境的机器人/远程机器人应用中，例如在软组织手术中，为操作者的手提供关于机器人/环境接触力的触觉反馈是很重要的，以便使操作者能够更好地控制这种接触力。在目前的手术系统中，缺乏对外科医生的触觉反馈既是一个安全问题，也是导致错误的原因。例如，在一项关于微创胆囊切除术的研究中，我们观察到不适当和过度施加力是胆囊穿孔的主要原因——我们假设向外科医生提供触觉反馈是减轻此类并发症所需要的。提出的研究侧重于开发一个令人满意的解决方案，缺乏触觉反馈的问题，在机器人辅助外科和远程外科系统。此外，所要求的设备将用于机器人辅助心脏跳动手术的研究。与心脏骤停手术不同，心脏跳动手术不涉及体外循环，而体外循环已被发现会导致长期认知能力丧失和更长的恢复时间等并发症。为了使心脏跳动手术成为可能，我们将研究的关键思想是控制手术机器人和摄像机始终跟随心脏的运动，这样外科医生就会觉得心脏的跳动是稳定的。拟议的实验试验台包括两个Phantom Premium 1.5A设备，用于我们的触觉用户界面和我们的（手术）机器人。此外，还需要一个用于测量机器人/环境接触力和扭矩的力传感器，三台用于机器人控制和通信的计算机，以及一个用于模拟网络缺陷（如时间延迟和信息丢失）的软件包。拟议的设备将使我能够在关键领域培养我的研究生，这些领域涉及创新的最先进的外科和远程外科技术的发展，这对加拿大有很大的希望。

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.