Preliminary Results of an Early Clinical Experience with the AcrobotTM System for Total Knee Replacement Surgery

Early clinical experience with a "hands-on" robotic system for total knee replacement surgery is presented. The system consists of a pre-operative CT based planning software, a small special purpose robot called Acrobot (active constraint robot) mounted on a gross positioning device and special leg fixtures. The surgeon guides the Acrobot under active constraint control, which constrains the motion into a predefined region, and thus allows surfaces of the bones to be machined safely and with high accuracy. A non-invasive anatomical registration method is used. The system was clinically tested on 7 patients with encouraging results.