Wearable Robots Hope to Improve Minimally Invasive Surgery

Researchers are developing wearable robotic tools for minimally invasive surgery designed to give surgeons more natural and dexterous movement than current surgical robots offer. The €4 million research project, which is being funded by the European Commission under HORIZON 2020, says the robotic tools will be worn on the surgeon’s hands and transmit the surgeon’s own movements to a closed surgical interface without restrictions, reducing the overall cognitive, manipulation and training demand.

There are three key pieces of hardware for this new surgical robotic system.

First is the exoskeleton that fits over the surgeon’s hands and controls the instruments inside the body. The exoskeleton will act as a new surgical ‘gripper’ that mimics the thumb and two fingers of the hand.

Second is the instrument that goes inside the body. It will have haptic abilities that allow surgeons to feel the tissues and organs inside the body, just like they do during conventional surgery. The sense of touch in this system will be dual: current research in haptic systems mainly focuses on the arm/forearm of the user. The system developed in this project will focus on haptic feedback on the fingers of the surgeon as well.

The third piece is smart glasses that enable the surgeon to have a realistic view of what is taking place inside the body.

www.gifs.com/gif/qjnXER

Professor Sanja Dogramadzi, of Bristol Robotics Laboratory and the lead researcher on this project, these developments stem from a need for better tools in robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery to support and enhance the surgeon’s performance in urology, cardiovascular and orthopaedic fields and to expand the potential for this technology to more complex surgical procedures.