Introducing haptic capabilities to a bone‐mounted robot for intra‐operative surface scanning

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Bone-mounted robots for orthopaedic surgery are small, cost-effective and could reduce invasiveness. Preoperative planning requires imaging (e.g. X-ray, CT, MRI) and a registration procedure, which introduces error. Accuracy might be improved by building an intraoperative anatomical model in the robot's own coordinate system, utilizing the rigid bone-robot connection. METHODS: Haptic capabilities were added to MBARS and user tests were conducted to help design the haptic control loop. The accuracy of a 3D physical scan was tested on a femur model. RESULTS: Indication for force scaling and mode switching was found. Average distance error of collected points from the surface scanned by the robot was 0.3 mm. CONCLUSIONS: It is suggested that haptic control of bone-mounted robots should be non-linear and not necessarily transparent. Haptic surface acquisition can be used to generate an accurate intraoperative model of a joint surface.