BOrEScOPE – Exoskeleton for Active Surgeon Support during Orthopedic Surgery

The use of robots in a medical environment is a challenging task not only for system development but also for the actual application in this demanding environment. Robots are used to enhance surgery quality in terms of precision, application of new therapies, or to improve ergonomics - only to name a few reasons. The approach described in this paper is to provide a lightweight exoskeleton worn by the orthopedic surgeon. It is intended to be used during drilling tasks at the spine and to enhance precision as the surgeon is led by optic, acoustic, and haptic perception. The parallel flux of forces and the inherently mobile robot base allow the surgeon to directly maintain responsibility for surgery. Not only the mechanical design of the system but also the control is decomposed into several levels. To do so, a behavior-based approach is used. The system's design criteria are briefly described and first results are presented. The exoskeleton is composed of an anthropomorphic arm actuated by twisted-string actuators. This leads to a lightweight construction. To provide sufficiently fast and precise information about the spatial position and its time derivations, optical and inertial tracking is used. A User Guidance Opto-Acoustic Display is utilized to provide the surgeon with information on position and orientation of the tool in six degrees of freedom with respect to the desired trajectory. First experimental results derived that the intended workspace meets the surgical requirements and the user guidance system enables the surgeon to follow the desired trajectory by intuitive user guidance.