Performance evaluation of haptic hand‐controllers in a robot‐assisted surgical system. Issue 4 (27th January 2015) - Zareinia, Kourosh
Abstract: Background: This paper presents the experimental evaluation of three commercially available haptic hand‐controllers to evaluate which was more suitable to the participants. Methods: Two surgeons and seven engineers performed two peg‐in‐hole tasks with different levels of difficulty. Each operator guided the end‐effector of a Kuka manipulator that held surgical forceps and was equipped with a surgical microscope. Sigma 7, HD 2 and PHANToM Premium 3.0 hand‐controllers were compared. Ten measures were adopted to evaluate operators' performances with respect to effort, speed and accuracy in completing a task, operator improvement during the tests, and the force applied by each haptic device. Results: The best performance was observed with the Premium 3.0; the hand‐piece was able to be held in a similar way to that used by surgeons to hold conventional tools. Conclusions: Hand‐controllers with a linkage structure similar to the human upper extremity take advantage of the inherent human brain connectome, resulting in improved surgeon performance during robotic‐assisted surgery. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.