Evaluation of the intuitive control system for an interactive robotic system

In this paper the concept and first evaluation of the control principle of the MicroAssistant is presented. The MicroAssistant is an interactive surgical robot system to support the surgeon in microsurgical interventions especially in middle ear surgery. During those interventions the surgeon is often confronted with very small and sensitive structures. This fact conflicts with the exhausting milling process which is necessary for widening the operation field. To solve this conflict the instrument is guided interactive by the MicroAssistant. In the first part this paper introduces the control principle established by the human machine cooperation with the MicroAssistant. In the second part the usability of the human-machine-interface and the control principle is evaluated. Therefore the accuracy of the freehand milling process is compared with the accuracy of the robot assisted telemanipulative milling process. The results show that the robot assisted milling is as accurate as the freehand milling because the maximum errors of 0.71 mm for the freehand milling and 0.67 mm for the robot assisted milling are nearly the same. Hence MicroAssistant could prevent slipping of during the milling process and lead to fewer complications in middle ear surgery while being as accurate as freehand interventions.