Assistive control of a surgical robot based on bilateral interacted force analysis

Interacted force between a robot, human and anatomical object in orthopedic surgery provides crucial information for safe and accurate bone cutting. When the robot plays the role of assisting the surgeon in the whole surgical procedure, the robot is trying to comply with the human intention according to various cutting conditions. The reaction force to the robot from the human is for indicating human intention, whereas the force from the anatomical object reflects the cutting condition. In this paper two impedance indices are defined by these two interacted forces and a surgical robot then decides whether assistive or resistant action is activated so that accuracy and safety of bone cutting can be achieved.