A Study on the Development of Head-Mounted Master Interface for Laparoscopic Surgical Robot System

Abstract

The objective of this study is to design and control an additional master interface for laparoscopic surgical robot to control the endoscopic system using simple head motions. The additional master interface, called the head-mounted master interface (HMI), allows intuitive control of the endoscopic system and can be implemented to the existing surgical robot system enabling continuous surgical flow.

The proposed system consists of the HMI, a simple three-dimensional endoscope, a four-degrees of freedom endoscope system, and a da Vinci Research Kit. The hardware of HMI is designed to be ergonomic and to be implemented to the stereo viewer of the existing system. The 27 pressure sensors and a hall sensor are located in the HMI to detect the seven simple head movements of the user. The sensor data is collected and classified using support vector machine in near real-time to manipulate the endoscopic system.

The HMI has been evaluated of its usability through performing a modified peg transfer task and measuring the time latency of the interface in controlling the endoscopic system. The results from such tests confirmed that the use of HMI can shorten the surgical operation time and enable continuous surgical flow. Furthermore, the modified peg transfer task result showed that the HMI could reduce the completion time compared to the former developments utilizing index fingers to manipulate the endoscopic system.

The HMI can be implemented to the laparoscopic surgical robot system to ensure simultaneous operation of the vision system and the patient side manipulators in accordance with the users intention. The HMI can be further developed to include the combination of head motions to make to control of vision system more intuitive. Consequently, the suggested HMI system could contribute to the advancements in medical field and even be applied to achieve industrial functions such as automated vision control.