Robot-assisted Surgery System with Kinesthetic Feedback

The better understanding of the human body systems and their specific functions has led to minimally invasive and microsurgical procedures being carried out a smaller and smaller scale. New therapies will require precision of 10 µm and better, which will only be achievable with robotic teleoperators. Experience with existing robot-assisted surgery systems shows that the man-machine interface is a critical component for the acceptance of this technology. Up to now, no universally satisfactory interface has been found. Therefore, this paper investigates a new concept based on kinesthetic motion feedback and presents details of the implementation of a first prototype.