title: A development of assistant surgical robot system based on surgical-operation-by-wire and hands-on-throttle-and-stick.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery offers several advantages compared with open surgery and conventional minimally invasive surgery. However, one issue that needs to be resolved is a collision between the robot arm and the assistant instrument. This is mostly caused by miscommunication between the surgeon and the assistant. To resolve this limitation, an assistant surgical robot system that can be simultaneously manipulated via a wireless controller is proposed to allow the surgeon to control the assistant instrument.
  
  
  METHODS
  The system comprises two novel master interfaces (NMIs), a surgical instrument with a gripper actuated by a micromotor, and 6-axis robot arm. Two NMIs are attached to master tool manipulators of da Vinci research kit (dVRK) to control the proposed system simultaneously with patient side manipulators of dVRK. The developments of the surgical instrument and NMI are based on surgical-operation-by-wire concept and hands-on-throttle-and-stick concept from the earlier research, respectively. Tests for checking the accuracy, latency, and power consumption of the NMI are performed. The gripping force, reaction time, and durability are assessed to validate the surgical instrument. The workspace is calculated for estimating the clinical applicability. A simple peg task using the fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery board and an in vitro test are executed with three novice volunteers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The NMI was operated for 185 min and reflected the surgeon's decision successfully with a mean latency of 132 ms. The gripping force of the surgical instrument was comparable to that of conventional systems and was consistent even after 1000 times of gripping motion. The reaction time was 0.4 s. The workspace was calculated to be 8397.4 cm(3). Recruited volunteers were able to execute the simple peg task within the cut-off time and successfully performed the in vitro test without any collision.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Various experiments were conducted and it is verified that the proposed assistant surgical robot system enables collision-free and simultaneous operation of the dVRK's robot arm and the proposed assistant robot arm. The workspace is appropriate for the performance of various kinds of surgeries. Therefore, the proposed system is expected to provide higher safety and effectiveness for the current surgical robot system.
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Program for Bioengineering, Graduate School, Seoul National University, Seoul, 110-744, South Korea.
authors.forename: Myungjoon
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-742, South Korea.
authors.forename: Chiwon
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Program for Bioengineering, Graduate School, Seoul National University, Seoul, 110-744, South Korea.
authors.forename: Woo Jung
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, 110-799, South Korea.
authors.forename: Yun Suhk
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Suh
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, 110-799, South Korea.
authors.forename: Han Kwang
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University College of Engineering, Seoul, 151-742, South Korea.
authors.forename: H Jin
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-742, South Korea. sungwan@snu.ac.kr.|Department of Biomedical Engineering, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, 110-799, South Korea. sungwan@snu.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Sungwan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D006225:Hand; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D010535:Laparoscopy; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D025321:Surgery, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013997:Time Factors; D014584:User-Computer Interface
keywords: Assistant surgical robot system; End-effector of surgical robot; Hands-on-throttle-and-stick (HOTAS); Minimally invasive surgery (MIS); Novel master interface (NMI); Surgical-operation-by-wire (SOBW); da Vinci research kit (dVRK)