Haptically-Enabled Robotic Surgical System (HeroSurg)

"The world’s first haptically-enabled minimally invasive robotic surgical system, with collision avoidance, modular instruments and automatic patient/bed adjustment, has been developed by researchers from the Institute for Intelligent Systems Research (IISRI) at Deakin University, in collaboration with Harvard University. The innovation was unveiled recently at the Australasian Simulation Congress, hosted by Simulation Australasia, at the Melbourne Convention Centre. The Haptically-Enabled Robotic Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgical System (HeroSurg) has several unique features that allow it to overcome many of the limitations of existing robotic laparoscopic systems. 

Advantages of HeroSurg 

“Haptics will add a greater ability to distinguish diseased tissues involved with cancer from normal tissues,” Professor Krishnan said. “It will also allow surgeons to feel more delicate tissues weakened by infection or inflammation and dissect them more carefully – and allow us to use finer and more delicate materials such as finer sutures in microsurgery.” HeroSurg will assist surgeons to perform demanding surgical procedures with comfort, accuracy and safety by providing real-time collision avoidance for medical instruments, and stereo-endoscopic vision." 

"A modular laparoscopic instrument was developed that is capable of measuring tip/tissue lateral interaction forces. The instrument is able to operate and sense the normal loads at the tip jaws without using any actuator or sensor at the tip. The modularity feature of the instrument enables the operator to quickly change the tip functionality, e.g. cutter, grasper, and dissector, without loss of control and force measurement capabilities. The specially designed calibration module and procedures provide easy and quick calibration of the strain gauges. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the force sensing feature of the instrument for lateral tip/tissue interaction forces. The results presented good accuracy and performance and verified the ability of the instrument to measure both the magnitude and direction of the applied lateral forces at the tip. The modularity and force sensing features of the proposed instrument enables the device to be employed in the haptically enabled robotic surgical system (HeroSurg) to restore the sense of touch in robotic surgical systems"

Source: IEEE, Deakin University