Augmented Comanipulation in Robotic Surgery

This paper presents a control scheme for augmented comanipulation with force feedback in robotic surgery. This approach aims at increasing the surgeon’s dexterity. The surgeon manipulates a handle mounted on the robot which manipulates the instrument. The control law ensures that the instrument applies on the organ the same forces that the surgeon applies on the handle but decreased by a scale factor. As a consequence, the robotic device provides the surgeon with an augmented sensation of the interaction forces between the instrument and the organ. The proposed control law does not require any knowledge of the environment. This control scheme is proven stable thanks to a passivity study. Indeed, passivity analysis is a useful tool for the stability analysis of a robot interacting with an unknown environment. Experimental results are presented on a robot dedicated to minimally invasive surgery.