Evaluation of a novel stair-climbing transportation aid for emergency medical services.

Acute and planned transportations of patients are major tasks for emergency medical services (EMS) and often result in substantial physical strains with a major impact on the workers' health, because current transportation aids cannot provide sufficient support, especially on stairs. A new stair-climbing and self-balancing approach (SEBARES) has been developed and its usability is evaluated in the context of this paper. Twelve participants operated a prototype in a transportation scenario and user forces, user joint angles and the perceived usability were evaluated. Results show that user forces were within long-term acceptable ergonomic limits for over 90% of the transportation time and a mainly healthy upright posture of the back could be maintained. This resulted in a healthy working posture for 85% of the time, according to the OWAS method, and a good perceived usability. A comparison to the most ergonomic aid according to literature, a caterpillar stair chair, reveals that similar upright postures are assumed, while the operation of SEBARES required only 47% of the forces to operate the caterpillar stair chair. A comparison to a previous field study indicates a reduction of strenuous working postures by a factor of three, which further confirms the ergonomic advantages of this concept.

Usability of cooperative surgical telemanipulation for bone milling tasks.

PURPOSE: Cooperative surgical systems enable humans and machines to combine their individual strengths and collaborate to improve the surgical outcome. Cooperative telemanipulated systems offer the widest spectrum of cooperative functionalities, because motion scaling is possible. Haptic guidance can be used to assist surgeons and haptic feedback makes acting forces at the slave side transparent to the operator, however, overlapping and masking of forces needs to be avoided. This study evaluates the usability of a cooperative surgical telemanipulator in a laboratory setting. METHODS: Three experiments were designed and conducted for characteristic surgical task scenarios derived from field studies in orthopedics and neurosurgery to address bone tissue differentiation, guided milling and depth sensitive milling. Interaction modes were designed to ensure that no overlapping or masking of haptic guidance and haptic feedback occurs when allocating information to the haptic channel. Twenty participants were recruited to compare teleoperated modes, direct manual execution and an exemplary automated milling with respect to usability. RESULTS: Participants were able to differentiate compact and cancellous bone, both directly manually and teleoperatively. Both telemanipulated modes increased effectiveness measured by the mean absolute depth and contour error for guided and depth sensitive millings. Efficiency is decreased if solely a boundary constraint is used in hard material, while a trajectory guidance and manual milling perform similarly. With respect to subjective user satisfaction trajectory guidance is rated best for guided millings followed by boundary constraints and the direct manual interaction. Haptic feedback only improved subjective user satisfaction. CONCLUSION: A cooperative surgical telemanipulator can improve effectiveness and efficiency close to an automated execution and enhance user satisfaction compared to direct manual interaction. At the same time, the surgeon remains part of the control loop and is able to adjust the surgical plan according to the intraoperative situation and his/her expertise at any time.

Augmentation of haptic feedback for teleoperated robotic surgery.

PURPOSE: A frequently mentioned lack of teleoperated surgical robots is the lack of haptic feedback. Haptics are not only able to mirror force information from the situs, but also to provide spatial guidance according to a surgical plan. However, superposition of the two haptic information can lead to overlapping and masking of the feedback and guidance forces. This study investigates different approaches toward a combination of both information and investigates effects on system usability. METHODS: Preliminary studies are conducted to define parameters for two main experiments. The two main experiments constitute simulated surgical interventions where haptic guidance as well as haptic feedback provide information for the surgeon. The first main experiment considers drilling for pedicle screw placements, while the second main experiment refers to three-dimensional milling tasks such as during partial knee replacements or craniectomies. For both experiments, different guidance modes in combination with haptic feedback are evaluated regarding effectiveness (e.g., distance to target depth), efficiency and user satisfaction (e.g., detectability of discrepancies in case of technical guidance error). RESULTS: Regarding pedicle screw placements a combination of a peripheral visual signal and a vibration constitutes a good compromise regarding distance to target depth and detectability of discrepancies. For milling tasks, trajectory guidance is able to improve efficiency and user satisfaction (e.g., perceived workload), while boundary constraints improve effectiveness. If, assistance cannot be offered in all degrees of freedom (e.g., craniectomies), a visual substitution of the haptic force feedback shows the best results, though participants prefer using haptic force feedback. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that in case haptic feedback and haptic assistance are combined appropriately, benefits of both haptic modalities can be exploited. Thereby, capabilities of the human-machine system are improved compared to usage of exclusively one of the haptic information.

Toward versatile cooperative surgical robotics: a review and future challenges.

PURPOSE: Surgical robotics has developed throughout the past 30 years resulting in more than 5000 different approaches proposed for various surgical disciplines supporting different surgical task sequences and differing ways of human-machine cooperation or degrees of automation. However, this diversity of systems influences cost as well as usability and might hinder their widespread adoption. In combination with the current trend toward open and modular "plug and play" dynamic networks of medical devices and IT systems in the operating room, a modular human-robot system design with versatile access to cooperative functions with varying degrees of automation on demand is desirable. Therefore, standardized robotic device profiles describing essential functional characteristics of cooperative robotic systems are mandatory. METHODS: Surgical robotics is analyzed from a human-machine interaction perspective to identify generic cooperative robotic device profiles, features and use cases. Therefore, cooperative aspects are introduced from a general point of view. Relevant communication channels used for human-machine interaction are then analyzed, referenced by surgical scenarios. Subsequently, proposed classifications of surgical task sequences and surgical robotic systems are analyzed with a focus on a modular design for cooperative robotics in surgery. RESULTS: Considerations based on cooperative guidelines are given and features are identified and summarized in a classification scheme used to define distinct generic cooperative robotic device profiles. The latter can be the basis for a modular architecture of future surgical robot systems. CONCLUSION: Modular system design can be expanded toward functionalities or different degrees of autonomy, shared or manual control. The proposed device profiles of cooperative surgical robots could lay the foundation for integration into open and modular dynamic "plug and play" networks in the operating room to enhance versatility, benefit-to-cost ratio and, thereby, market spread of surgical robotics.