Design of an adaptable haptic device for an arthroscopy training environment

Learning process of minimal invasive surgery (MIS) will be strongly based on surgical simulators. However, general medical simulators do not take into account all the requirements, such us surgeon’s position or possible intervention angles. Our MIS adaptable new simulator incorporates two additional degrees of freedom: a displacement of every actuator set allows flexibility to adapt the inter-trocar distance and portal angle adjustment makes possible rotating these sets around the device symmetry axis. The design allows an ergonomic disposition of the surgical instruments according to the trainee features and permits software developers to overcome the constraints of general purpose simulators.