Laparoscopic Telesurgical Workstation

Robotic telesurgery is a promising application of robotics to medicine, aiming to enhance the dexterity and sensation of minimally invasive surgery through millimeter-scale manipulators under control of the surgeon. With appropriate communication links, it would also be possible to perform remote surgery for care in rural areas where specialty care is unavailable, or to provide emergency care en route to a hospital. The UC Berkeley/Endorobotics/UCSF Telesurgical Workstation is a master-slave telerobotic system, with two 6 degree of freedom (DOF) robotic manipulators, designed for laparoscopic surgery. The slave robot has a 2 DOF wrist inside the body to allow high dexterity manipulation in addition to the 4 DOF of motion possible through the entry port, which are actuated by an external gross motion platform. The kinematics and the controller of the system are designed to accommodate the force and movement requirements of complex tasks, including suturing and knot tying. The system has force feedback in 4 axes to improve the sensation of telesurgery. In this paper, the telesurgical system will be introduced with discussion of kinematic and control issues and presentation of in vitro test results.