Time Delay Investigation in Telerobotic Surgery

Telerobotic surgery is a medical technology that allows a surgeon to operate on a patient from a distance, via a communication network. As with all telerobotic procedures, factors such as time delay or limited bandwidth may affect the performance of the robotics. In addition, surgeries require contact with soft tissues of the body, resulting in unaccounted external forces on the robotic manipulator. The paper investigates the effects of time delay on the desired trajectory of a telerobotic arm that undergoes forces due to contact with skin tissue. Two behaviours will be explored through simulation, under different time delays, with the robotic arm’s end effector sliding across the surface of the skin, as well as compressing the skin perpendicularly. Simulation results are compared with the expected behaviour of existing telerobotic performance. It was found that tangential forces across the skin’s surface do not significantly impact telerobotic performance but when subject to normal contact, the robotic arm fails under shorter time delays than expected. Further experimentation with trajectories, not limited to parallel or perpendicular motion of the effector on the skin, and trials involving real tissues and manipulators will provide greater insight for understanding telerobotic performance in surgery.