A Workcell for the Development of Robot-Assisted Surgical Procedures

This paper describes a robotic workstation for the development of new robot-assisted surgical procedures. This work is motivated by the difficulties and cost associated to the development of surgical robots, often requiring large investments and several re-designs which limit wider use of this technology. The approach presented here consists of using a general purpose robotic workcell to develop the hardware and the surgical aspects of new robot-based surgical systems, before committing to a completely new system design. The workcell is based on a clean room PUMA 260 manipulator, suitably enhanced to expand and improve its capabilities, and on a vision-based operator interface. Two new robot-assisted surgical procedures have been developed and tested using this set-up: percutaneous discectomy and knee osteoctomy. By using the robotic workcell, engineers and surgeons are able to define many aspects of the two procedures, such as surgical gestures, workspace of the robot, and calibration procedures, without incurring a large, up-front investment. First, the article describes the configuration of the workcell, the enhancements to the PUMA manipulator and the surgical procedures developed with this setup. Then the results of the tests and the lessons learned using the workcell are discussed in some detail.