Evaluation of unmanned airborne vehicles and mobile robotic telesurgery in an extreme environment.
As unmanned extraction vehicles become a reality in the military theater, opportunities to augment medical operations with telesurgical robotics become more plausible. This project demonstrated an experimental surgical robot using an unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV) as a network topology. Because battlefield operations are dynamic and geographically challenging, the installation of wireless networks is not a feasible option at this point. However, to utilize telesurgical robotics to assist in the urgent medical care of wounded soldiers, a robust, high bandwidth, low latency network is requisite. For the first time, a mobile surgical robotic system was deployed to an austere environment and surgeons were able to remotely operate the systems wirelessly using a UAV. Two University of Cincinnati surgeons were able to remotely drive the University of Washington's RAVEN robot's end effectors. The network topology demonstrated a highly portable, quickly deployable, bandwidth-sufficient and low latency wireless network required for battlefield use.
Harnett
Brett M
BM
Department of Surgery, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45267, USA. brett.harnett@uc.edu
Doarn
Charles R
CR
Rosen
Jacob
J
Hannaford
Blake
B
Broderick
Timothy J
TJ
D000401:Aircraft; D004777:Environment; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D006775:Hospitals, Packaged; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008887:Military Medicine / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D019060:Minimally Invasive Surgical Procedures / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D012307:Risk Factors; D012371:Robotics; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D014481:United States