A Prevent of Motion Causing Accidents in Orthopedic Surgery by Teleoperated Haptic Drill

In spinal surgery, orthopedists need expert skills to use handheld surgical drill devices whose burs rotate at high speed to cut the vertebrae. Since robotics and its related technologies are useful to enhance abilities of surgeons and safety of surgery, orthopedic robots have been studied and developed. In this study, two unexpected motions which may cause surgical accidents while using drill devices are detected by a teleoperated haptic drill system to enhance safety of spinal surgery. One of the unexpected motions is sudden position change of the bur tip at penetration of a bone. The other is rapid motion on a surface of a bone caused by high speed rotation of a bur. The teleoperated drill system is composed of a drill device and a three degree-of-freedom haptic teleoperation robot. A method to detect the unexpected motions while cutting an object with a flat surface is implemented to the system. The feasibility of the system is confirmed by experiments using a pseudo bone.