Bimanual telerobotic surgery with asymmetric force feedback: A daVinci® surgical system implementation

This paper describes the applicability of an asymmetric force feedback control framework for bimanual robot-assisted surgery using the da Vinci surgical system (Intuitive Surgical Inc.). The core idea of this method, previously presented in [1], is that when completing two-handed tasks involving an action and a reaction force, the forces applied on the environment by the action hand are not transferred back to the same hand, but rather to the reaction hand. Such a method provides an intuitive way of feeling the force, while avoiding the instability issues, since the control loop in not closed from the slave to the master of the same hand. In the introductory paper [1], the technique was implemented using game controllers with simple tasks. In this paper, the technique was implemented on the da Vinci surgical system (Classic version) using the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) controllers that enable complete access to all control levels of the da Vinci robot manipulators via custom mechatronics and open-source software. The implementation involved a full re-write of a teleoperation controller based on kinematic correspondence with gravity compensation, as well as torque control functions for force rendering on the da Vinci master manipulators. A series of suture knot tying and haptic exploration experiments were conducted in which a small group of users, both surgeons (N=3) and novices (N=6) evaluated the system. The results show that the proposed technique has some promise when implemented in a realistic 14 degrees of freedom system, but further work is necessary to make the system fully usable.