Patient specific surgical simulator for the evaluation of the movability of bimanual robotic arms

This work presents a simulator based on patient specific data for bimanual surgical robots. Given a bimanual robot with a particular geometry and kinematics, and a patient specific virtual anatomy, the aim of this simulator was to evaluate if a dexterous movability was obtainable to avoid collisions with the surrounding virtual anatomy in order to prevent potential damages to the tissues during the real surgical procedure. In addition, it could help surgeons to find the optimal positioning of the robot before entering the operative room. This application was tested using a haptic device to reproduce the interactions of the robot with deformable organs. The results showed good performances in terms of frame rate for the graphic, haptic, and dynamic processes. © 2011 The authors.