Fine Wrist Control as a Marker of Surgical Teleoperation Expertise
Authors: Mary Kate Gale, Shujiro Shobayashi, Sangeet Satpathy, Nitsan Davidor, Ilana Nisky, Allison Okamura
Organizations: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. · Robotics Program, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland. · Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
Unlike most intensely physical pursuits, surgical robotic teleoperation training focuses primarily on task outcomes rather than surgeon body posture or biomechanics during task completion. Toward the question of the role of biomechanics in surgical expertise, we sought to characterize the articular motion of expert teleoperators as compared to novice users. Twenty-seven novices and nine experts completed a non-medical cylinder-on-peg transfer task while their upper limb biomechanics were recorded via motion trackers. During more difficult motions, experts stabilized their wrist motion more than novices, while maintaining adequate range of motion in their shoulder and elbow and completing the task significantly faster than novices. This marker of expertise suggests the importance of attention to user biomechanics during teleoperation of surgical robots.
Figures & tables
Fig. 1: (A) Task board as seen through the dVRK endoscopic camera, displaying blue and white center cylinders, light-up outer pegs, and surgical instrument for grasping. (B) Location of motion trackers on participant’s torso, right upper arm, right forearm, and right hand.
Fig. 2: Expert (blue) vs. novice (orange) articular range of motion during non-inversion vs. inversion trials for (A) wrist flexion and extension, (B) wrist radial/ulnar deviation, and (C) forearm pronation and supination. Each dot represents the average range of motion for one participant.
Input devices for robotic microsurgery are frequently described as preserving the surgeon's trained technique, but the claim is rarely measured. We compared manual and teleoperated intraocular instrument motion with the trocar constraint, the instrument, the eye model and the tracking source common to both conditions, so that the control interface was the only factor varied. Prior comparisons cannot hold the instrument fixed, because a robotic instrument is not the tool used manually. Sixteen participants performed a navigation task on a commercial ophthalmic simulator by hand and through a three-degree-of-freedom input device commanding a five-joint robot. Task outcome was equal but at ceiling: every participant acquired all five targets under both interfaces with no retinal or lens injury. Execution differed on every measure. Teleoperated trials took three times as long at a quarter of the median speed, covered less than half the angular working range, and were broken into 3.5 times as many separate movements. Completion time and movement fragmentation improved substantially across four trials of practice and had not plateaued; the measures set by the configured rate ceiling and joint limit changed the least. Finger activity doubled and pinch variability tripled, so reducing instrument degrees of freedom redistributed manual effort rather than reducing it. The interface preserves the outcome and reshapes the execution.
Korab Hoxha, Mirza Imamovic, Angelo Henriques +1
Department of Ophthalmology, School of Medicine and Health, TUM University Hospital, Munich, Germany · Chair of Ergonomics, Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany · Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada
High-performance surgical master consoles offer intuitive articulated manipulation but are expensive and difficult to reproduce, while accessible commercial haptic devices lack built-in interfaces for surgical wrist articulation and continuous grasp. We present a laparoscopic master in which general-purpose robot manipulators provide the programmable base and surgical-specific interaction is concentrated in a separable distal adapter. Each 6-DoF arm carries a custom 2-DoF direct-drive wrist, continuous grasp sensing, and clutch-based workspace management; the complete bimanual hardware costs approximately US$5,500, below common bimanual commercial haptic references. To support sustained hand-guided use, we characterize current scaling, gravity, and break-away friction and use them for posture-dependent gravity compensation and motion-gated assistance, reducing continuous actuation and thermal loading. A common master state drives either Isaac Sim or an RCM-constrained dual-FR3 platform. Master-state publication to FR3 target update adds at most 8 ms, and tip tracking shows 0.31-0.66 mm mean delay-aligned residuals. In a porcine cholecystectomy experiment, five common operator-side metrics and hand/tip-speed distributions were compared descriptively with human in-vivo telemetry from 120 clinical Versius recordings of 99 cholecystectomy procedures; no interruption originated from the master console, and no abnormal clinical signs were recorded during the 7-day postoperative observation period. These results demonstrate a surgical master built from general-purpose robot arms with surgical-specific interaction concentrated in a separable distal interface.
Minsung Kim, Seonho Shim, Dongho Yee +9
Department of Transdisciplinary Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea. · Rosota Inc., Seoul, Republic of Korea. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. +6
This work investigates the control strategies of complex whole-body robot teleoperation that coordinate active perception, bimanual manipulation, and navigation. We developed a hybrid control framework, combining the free-form and constrained control, for the whole-body teleoperation of the TIAGo mobile manipulator. We conducted a user study to explore people's control strategies under different task constraints such as limited time and low tolerance of errors. Our results highlight the effective use of coordinated control in improving task efficiency and reducing the risk of reaching individual joint limits. We discuss our results and their implications for designing future whole-body robot teleoperation systems.
Tsung-Chi Lin, Juo-Tung Chen, Chien-Ming Huang
Department of Computer Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. · Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.