Application of Force Feedback in Robot Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery

Abstract

Abstract. Currently deployed systems for robot assisted, minimally invasive surgery come with no force feedback. This is one of the main reasons for prolonged operation time and collateral tissue trauma. We present an experimental setup for an endoscopic robot system, that is capable of both, measurement and reflection of forces. We have evaluated certain tasks known from endoscopic surgery within this scope. First results have shown, that force feedback reduces most of the difficulties inherent to minimally invasive surgery without haptic feedback. 1