Is 3-DoF position feedback sufficient for exact positioning of a robotic endoscope end-effector in the human knee?

Abstract

Minimally invasive robot-assisted laser osteotomy poses new challenges for tele-manipulation. The surgeon does not only need to move the end-effector to a desired position inside the patient's body, but also to a specific orientation for the laser beam to cut the bone at the desired angle. The herein proposed work investigates if haptic position feedback in form of a path controller (also known as virtual fixture) in addition to visual feedback improves the time and path length to reach the target pose using a teleoperation system. In a pilot study in a virtual environment, we showed that both the time to the target position and the covered path length could be reduced by the haptic feedback. However, most of the time spent on the task was invested to reach the target orientation. Therefore, more investigations will be needed to determine if haptic feedback can improve the human's performance also for end-effector orientation.