Data-Driven Design of a Dexterous Robotic Microsurgery System

摘要

Critical microsurgery tasks such as small blood vessel anastomosis demand great manual dexterity and precision and are barely tenable by even the most practiced and skilled surgeons. Robotic micromanipulation devices are an obvious solution to this problem as they provide precise, repeatable motion at the sub-millimeter scale while filtering out physiological noise that limits the success of manual procedures. In order to be clinically effective and relevant, such robotic devices must provide significant improvements on the motion range, bandwidth, precision, and dexterity achievable with current manual microsurgery procedures [1]. This work comprises our first steps toward the empirical characterization of microsurgical workspaces necessary for the development of proper microsurgery robot performance specifications. In this study we record the motion of microsurgical tools during a simulated anastomosis procedure using an electromagnetic (EM) motion tracking system. The resulting data is used to establish microsurgery motion requirements which will inform the design of a robotic micromanipulation system that enables dexterous tissue handling and suturing on the sub-millimeter scale. 2