Minimally Invasive Surgery: Empirical Comparison of Manual and Robot Assisted Force Feedback Surgery

Abstract

Abstract. Manual and robot assisted minimally invasive surgery techniques were compared by a dissection task. While there was no force feedback in one robot condition, forces were scaled adjusting to psychophysical thresholds in four other trials. The conditions turned out to have specific advantages: When it is essential to avoid any unintentional transection a robot assisted surgery displaying forces near absolute threshold seems to be most suitable; when operating time has to be reduced a manual intervention seems to be superior. Thereby it has to be considered that both techniques require different abilities and robot assisted surgery affords acquisition instead of manual surgical skill transfer. 1