Review of Advanced Medical Telerobots

Abstract

The advent of telerobotic systems has revolutionized various aspects of the industry and human life. This technology is designed to augment human sensorimotor capabilities to extend them beyond natural competence. Classic examples are space and underwater applications when distance and access are the two major physical barriers to be combated with this technology. In modern examples, telerobotic systems have been used in several clinical applications, including teleoperated surgery and telerehabilitation. In this regard, there has been a significant amount of research and development due to the major benefits in terms of medical outcomes. Recently telerobotic systems are combined with advanced artificial intelligence modules to better share the agency with the operator and open new doors of medical automation. In this review paper, we have provided a comprehensive analysis of the literature considering various topologies of telerobotic systems in the medical domain while shedding light on different levels of autonomy for this technology, starting from direct control, going up to command-tracking autonomous telerobots. Existing challenges, including instrumentation, transparency, autonomy, stochastic communication delays, and stability, in addition to the current direction of research related to benefit in telemedicine and medical automation, and future vision of this technology, are discussed in this review paper.

A Novel Untethered Hand Wearable with Fine-Grained Cutaneous Haptic Feedback

“…Our proposed high-cutaneous haptic hand wearable has an average latency of 46.5 ms, which is much lower than the 600 ms tolerable delay acceptable by a surgeon in the absence of haptic feedback reported by Tavakoli and Patel [10]. Stability is one of the main bottlenecks of adding haptic feedback to surgical telerobotic systems [11]. However, by delivering ungrounded cutaneous feedback to the human operator, Pacchierotti et al demonstrated that cutaneous haptic feedback could be used to enhance the performance of robotic teleoperation systems while guaranteeing their safety, even in the presence of destabilizing factors such as communication delays and hard contacts [5], as shown in the diagram in Figure 1.…”

QoS Provisioning: Key Drivers and Enablers Toward the Tactile Internet in Beyond 5G Era

“…eHealthcare enables medical experts to be available all over the world for physical examinations, patient monitoring, or even perform complicated surgery at a distance using the remote control and telerobots. The study in [40] reviewed various telerobotic technologies in the medical domain, including telerobotic surgery and telerobotic rehabilitation; and [41] reviewed telemedicine and eHealth studies, analyzing QoS, QoE, and their corresponding clinical requirements to ensure healthcare system privacy, reliability, and stability.…”

Low-Cost Force Sensors Embedded in Physical Human–Machine Interfaces: Concept, Exemplary Realization on Upper-Body Exoskeleton, and Validation

“…For instance, this could be the case for the risk assessment of collaborated robots in terms of ISO TS 15066 and the embeddedness of safety rules [5] as well as for ergonomic, customer-oriented, and targeted design decisions of, e.g., power tools based on analyzed grasp and clamping forces [6]. In addition, clinical applications are possible for observing, e.g., therapeutical compressions [7], rehabilitation motion trainings [8,9], or (tele-)medical diagnoses and treatments [10,11]. Tailored to the application example of exoskeletons as wearable, physical support systems with multiple possible characteristics in, e.g., power supply, interface design, or path of force [12], the assessment of the system's effects on the users' workload, kinematics, and wearing comfort is often of central interest [13].…”