Setup of a Scientific Research Platform for Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Heart Surgery Scenarios

In this paper we briefly describe a research platform for robot-assisted minimally invasive heart surgery. The focus is on building up the experimental system, installed at the German Heart Center Munich. It provides force-feedback for the surgical instruments and Cartesian control on each of the four end effectors. We have defined three subsystems which are enhanced continuously: (1) force measurement and force-feedback by means of strain gauge sensors, (2) a vision subsystem which gives the system an internal representation and semantics of the intraoperative situs, (3) a realistic 3D user interface which represents the scenario and allows to virtually plan and preview trajectories. Currently the system is used to determine the degree of automation and assistance to disburden the surgeon.