Accuracy and efficiency of drilling trajectories with augmented reality versus conventional navigation randomized crossover trial.

Conventional navigation systems (CNS) in surgery require strong spatial cognitive abilities and hand-eye coordination. Augmented Reality Navigation Systems (ARNS) provide 3D guidance and may overcome these challenges, but their accuracy and efficiency compared to CNS have not been systematically evaluated. In this randomized crossover study with 36 participants from different professional backgrounds (surgeons, students, engineers), drilling accuracy, time and perceived workload were evaluated using ARNS and CNS.

MINARO DRS: usability study of a robotic-assisted laminectomy.

Purpose: Although the literature shows that robotic assistance can support the surgeon, robotic systems are not widely spread in clinics. They often incorporate large robotic arms adopted from the manufacturing industry, imposing safety hazards when in contact with the patient or surgical staff. We approached this limitation with a modular dual robot consisting of an ultra-lightweight carrier robot for rough prepositioning and small, highly dynamic, application-specific, interchangeable tooling robots.

Accuracy of on-site teleoperated milling with haptic assistance.

Purpose: In bone surgery specialties, like orthopedics, neurosurgery, and oral and maxillofacial surgery patient safety and treatment success depends on the accurate implementation of computer-based surgical plans. Unintentional plan deviations can result in long-term functional damage to the patient. With on-site teleoperation, the surgeon operates a slave robot with a physically-decoupled master device, while being directly present at the operation site.

Evaluation of a novel stair-climbing transportation aid for emergency medical services.

Acute and planned transportations of patients are major tasks for emergency medical services (EMS) and often result in substantial physical strains with a major impact on the workers' health, because current transportation aids cannot provide sufficient support, especially on stairs. A new stair-climbing and self-balancing approach (SEBARES) has been developed and its usability is evaluated in the context of this paper. Twelve participants operated a prototype in a transportation scenario and user forces, user joint angles and the perceived usability were evaluated.

Usability of cooperative surgical telemanipulation for bone milling tasks.

Purpose: Cooperative surgical systems enable humans and machines to combine their individual strengths and collaborate to improve the surgical outcome. Cooperative telemanipulated systems offer the widest spectrum of cooperative functionalities, because motion scaling is possible. Haptic guidance can be used to assist surgeons and haptic feedback makes acting forces at the slave side transparent to the operator, however, overlapping and masking of forces needs to be avoided.

Augmentation of haptic feedback for teleoperated robotic surgery.

Purpose: A frequently mentioned lack of teleoperated surgical robots is the lack of haptic feedback. Haptics are not only able to mirror force information from the situs, but also to provide spatial guidance according to a surgical plan. However, superposition of the two haptic information can lead to overlapping and masking of the feedback and guidance forces.

Toward versatile cooperative surgical robotics: a review and future challenges.

Purpose: Surgical robotics has developed throughout the past 30 years resulting in more than 5000 different approaches proposed for various surgical disciplines supporting different surgical task sequences and differing ways of human-machine cooperation or degrees of automation. However, this diversity of systems influences cost as well as usability and might hinder their widespread adoption. In combination with the current trend toward open and modular "plug and play" dynamic networks of medical devices and IT systems in the operating room, a modular human-robot system design with versatile access to cooperative functions with varying degrees of automation on demand is desirable.