Development of an Orthopaedic Robot Surgical system

Abstract

Industrial robots have been readily available for 40 years but the surgical robots designed to support surgeons have existed for only a decade or less. Surgical robotics has the potential to provide better quality patient care by improving current procedures, allowing additional capabilities that are currently unavailable, and improving the means of evaluating the success of surgeries. This paper describes the development of an Orthopaedic Robot Surgical System for cannulated facture fixation (CFF). In the developed system, a surgeon can interact with his/her virtual environment via a developed virtual reality system. The surgical tools are created using CAD software and human organs are generated from the medical images, e.g. MRI data or CAT slices. The data obtained from virtual system are filtered and simulated in an off-line surgical simulation program. The program can be simulated many times and the best path will be selected for the actual surgical operation. In the developed system, a KUKA KR-6 industrial robot is used to execute the surgical operation. The developed robot surgical system is not going to replace surgeons, but it will provide intelligent assistance with routine tasks, highly accurate, reductions in radiation exposure, and training of surgeons.