Surgeon Training in Telerobotic Surgery via a Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Surgical Simulation
• Medical Training

Background:

• Commercial robotic surgery simulators lack crucial safety and motion planning features.
• Patient safety and operational efficiency in telerobotic surgery are paramount.
• Existing simulators do not adequately prepare trainees for critical safety events.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a comprehensive telerobotic surgery simulator for skill acquisition.
• To integrate safety hazard training and optimal motion planning into surgical simulation.
• To enhance trainee preparedness for real-world telerobotic surgical scenarios.

Main Methods:

• A hardware-in-the-loop simulator was developed using the Raven-II™ open source surgical robot.
• Integration of a physics engine and a safety hazard injection engine.
• Implementation of a Fast Marching Tree-based motion planning algorithm for optimal path generation.

Main Results:

• Successfully reproduced safety hazard events reported in the FDA MAUDE database.
• Developed a novel haptic feedback strategy to alert operators to deviations from real robot dynamics.
• Generated semi-optimal paths using a motion planner in an interactive training environment.

Conclusions:

• The proposed simulator enhances telerobotic surgery training by incorporating safety hazard simulation and haptic feedback.
• Motion planning assists trainees in learning efficient and safe instrument movement patterns.
• This framework offers a more comprehensive and safer training solution for robotic surgery.