To carry out surgical operations in the nasal cavity, a surgeon needs to use one hand to hold and control an endoscope that views the nasal cavity and the other hand to manipulate surgical tools. In this project, we propose to develop a robot manipulator to hold and control the endoscope so that the surgeon can use both his/her hands to perform the operational procedure, which is highly preferable. The robot manipulator consists of a positioning device, which is to be manually set up before the operation, and a compact dexterous endoscope holder with fine motion and force control, which is to be controlled by the surgeon. The dexterous endoscope holder will have five degrees of freedom that are specially designed so as to realize fine motion of the endoscope inside the narrow nasal cavity. The operational safety of the proposed robotic system is guaranteed by a passive safety mechanism and an active force controller. The hand-busy surgeon controls motion of the endoscope by a friendly force-reflecting foot-controlled or voice-controlled interface, which enables the surgeon to feel or understand the interaction forces of the endoscope with the nasal cavity. To guarantee stability of the system, we will develop a sensor-based motion planner that maps the surgeon’s motion commands to the motion of the endoscope based on the compliance of tissues in the nasal cavity, which is estimated on-line using the force and position measurements. The performance of the robotic endoscope holder will be verified by experiments. The results will advance research of robotics technology for nasal surgery and have direct applications for medical services in Hong Kong.
Sponsor:
Principal Investigator:
Co-investigators:
- Dr. Chan, Hing Sang
- Dr. Ng, Siu Kwan
- Professor Tong, Michael C. F.
- Dr. Vlantis, Alexander Chris
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology / Head and Neck Surgery/CUHK
