Novice and expert haptic behaviours while using a robot controlled surgery system

STRAS (Single access Transluminal Robotic Assistant for Surgeons) is a flexible robotic system based on the Anubis® platform of Karl Storz for application to intraluminal procedures. It consists of three cable-driven systems, one endoscope serving as guide and two inserted instruments. The flexible and bendable instruments have three degrees of freedom and can be teleoperated by a single user via two specially designed master interfaces. In this research, a pair of specific sensor gloves, which ergonomically fit to the master handles of the system was designed and the forces applied by one expert and one novice user during system-specific task execution were compared. The results show that user expertise is not only reflected by shorter task execution times, but also by specific differences in handgrip forces applied during the manipulations.