Determining the threshold of time-delay for teleoperation accuracy and efficiency in relation to telesurgery.

Background: Advances in robotics have made teleoperated surgical procedures a feasible means of treating patients in remote locations. In this study a suite of experiments was performed to investigate the influence of time-delay on teleoperation accuracy and efficiency during a path-following task.

Materials And Methods: Subjects used a Phantom Omni 6-degrees of freedom (dof) input device (Sensable, Triangle Park, NC) to move the end-effector of a Mitsubishi (Tokyo, Japan) PA-10 7-dof robotic manipulator along a prescribed path.