Haptic Feedback in a Telepresence System for Endoscopic Heart Surgery

The implementation of telemanipulator systems for cardiac surgery enabled heart surgeons to perform delicate minimally invasive procedures with high precision under stereoscopic view. At present, commercially available systems do not provide force-feedback or Cartesian control for the operating surgeon. The lack of haptic feedback may cause damage to tissue and can cause breaks of suture material. In addition, minimally invasive procedures are very tiring for the surgeon due to the need for visual compensation for the missing force feedback. While a lack of Cartesian control of the end effectors is acceptable for surgeons (because every movement is visually supervised), it prevents research on partial automation. In order to improve this situation, we have built an experimental telemanipulator for endoscopic surgery that provides both force-feedback (in order to improve the feeling of immersion) and Cartesian control as a prerequisite for automation. In this article, we focus on the i...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: PRESENCE
• Authors: Hermann Georg Mayer, Istvan Nagy, Alois Knoll, Eva U. Braun, Robert Bauernschmitt, Rüdiger Lange
• Keywords: Cartesian Control, Minimally Invasive, PRESENCE 2007, Surgeons