Teleoperation system desing of a robot assisted endoscopic pituitary surgery

Abstract

Teleoperation, also named telerobotics, is defined as controlling a robot over a distance by a remote controller. In a teleoperation setting, the human operator controls the master system(s) to the slave system(s) via wired or wireless communication channel. Genarally, in bilateral teleoperation, the human operator is informed about the slave environment via feedback signals (haptic, visual or audio) sent back from the slave environment. Commonly, teleoperated systems are more preferable in hazardous environments to protect the human operator; neverthless, there many other fields where the teleoperated systems are employed for various tasks. one of these areas, where teleoperation technology is becoming more popular,is the medical area. Telesurgical equipments allow more precise performance than a humman can achieve especially in minimally invasive surgeries. The purpose of this thesisis to develop a novel teleoperation system architecturewhich will be used to support the endoscopic pituitary surgery procedures which are classified under minimally invasive surgeries. Even though, the surgeon has only two hands, the proposed system aims to enable the surgeon to operate with three different surgical tools simultaneously including the endescope. he type of work is categorized under collaborative surgical robots, which incorporates a teleoperation system setup. he master control unit is a ring-shaped remote controller which consists of an inertial measurement unit and a wireless module. Surgeon wears the master system during the operation while holding a surgical tool such as the aspirator, and delivers the voluntary commands to the slave system by triggering a food pedal. The slave is the endescope holder robot which is a 8 degrees-of-freedom manipulator whose 3 degrees-of-freedom are active and the rest of them are passive. here is also an indicator panel which is used to provide visual feedback to the surgeon indicating the states of the surgey and excessive force application on the tissue.