A Dextrous Master for Telesurgery

Minimally invasive surgical techniques, in particular laparoscopy, have many advantages over traditional surgery, most notably more rapid patient recovery. Limitations of current instrumentation, however, can make laparoscopic surgery awkward for the surgeon. A teleoperative surgical workstation would improve the surgeon's dexterity and control during laparoscopy. This report rst presents a brief background on laparoscopy, describes a proposed telesurgi-cal workstation, and discusses design goals for the human interface, or dextrous master, for this workstation. It then describes a prototype glove-like master and presents preliminary performance and calibration data obtained with this device.