Asynchronous force and visual feedback in teleoperative laparoscopic surgical system

Abstract

Force feedback systems have been developed to improve the user-friendliness of robotic surgery systems. In teleoperative surgery, one of the major problems is the delay of the transmission of the information from the operation site to the surgery site. The transmission delays of the control signal and force information are less than the that of the image signal. In many cases, the visual information is synchronized with the force information in order to avoid a time gap between them. In this paper, we propose that force information be presented earlier than the visual information. This approach reduces the damage to the organs in surgical operations even though there is a time gap between the delay of force information and visual information. In addition, we propose a method to present predicted force information to avoid damage to the organs due to time delays in teleoperative surgery. The liver can be treated with a contact force of less than 0.8 N and a grasping force of less than 1.1 N by applying the proposed method. The method can realize a teleoperative surgery without damaging the patient's organs.