Mixed Reality Based Teleoperation of Surgical Robotics

Many surgical robotic systems are controlled by mechanical based devices that require the operator to remain at a fixed location away from the robot. This restriction in mobility and physical barrier between the surgeon and the robot may reduce procedural efficiency. Thus, we propose an alternative teleoperation approach and mixed reality based system that uses the surgeon's tracked hand poses to control the robot through the use of an untethered head mounted display. We conducted a controlled user study to assess the efficacy of our system. Our experimental results indicate that, for the ring-wire task we tested, there is not a considerable difference in the performance of users compared to existing mechanical based teleoperation devices.