Hand position effects on precision and speed in telerobotic surgery.
BACKGROUND
Many surgical robotic interfaces allow users to interact with robots over a wide potential range of motion, yet variation in operator performance across a range of motion remains unexamined. This research identifies and explores a new construct, the surgeon's 'comfortable working envelope' within the available range of motion, as a factor in surgical robotic interface design.


METHODS
Task accuracy and completion time for a simple aimed movement task were analysed as a function of participant hand positions obtained via infrared motion tracking.


RESULTS
Hand positions outside the 'comfortable working envelope' led to a 20% increase in error magnitude. With respect to the overall input device range of motion, there were large variations in performance, up to 31% difference in error magnitude and 11% difference in movement time.


CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that advanced surgical robots should have intelligent re-indexing strategies. Alternatively, the robot's control gain should adaptively change with respect to hand position to normalize a surgeon's performance throughout his/her working volume.
Golenberg
L
L
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202, USA. golenber@wayne.edu
Cao
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A
Ellis
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RD
Klein
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Auner
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Pandya
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AK
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D011187:Posture / Q000502:physiology*; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*; D025321:Surgery, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014584:User-Computer Interface