SUMMARYThe enhanced dexterity and manipulability offered by master–slave teleoperated surgical systems have significantly improved the performance and safety of minimally invasive surgeries. However, effective manipulation of surgical robots is sometimes limited due to the mismatch between the slave and master robots’ kinematics and workspace. The purpose of this paper is first to formulate a quantifiable measure of the combined master–slave system manipulability. Next, we develop a null-space controller for the redundant master robot that employs the proposed manipulability index to enhance the performance of teleoperation tasks by matching the kinematics of the redundant master robot with the kinematics of the slave robot. The null-space controller modulates the redundant degrees of freedom of the master robot to reshape its manipulability ellipsoid (ME) towards the ME of the slave robot. The ME is the geometric interpretation of the kinematics of a robot. By reshaping the master robot’s manipulability, we match the master and slave robots’ kinematics. We demonstrate that by using a redundant master robot, we are able to enhance the master–slave system manipulability and more intuitively transfer the slave robot’s dexterity to the user. Simulation and experimental studies are performed to validate the performance of the proposed control strategy. Results demonstrate that by employing the proposed manipulability index, we can enhance the user’s control over the force/velocity of a surgical robot and minimize the user’s control effort for a teleoperated task.

中文翻译：

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在远程手术系统中使用冗余用户界面来提高任务绩效

总结主从遥控手术系统提供的增强的灵巧性和可操作性显着提高了微创手术的性能和安全性。然而，由于从属机器人和主控机器人的运动学和工作空间之间的不匹配，手术机器人的有效操作有时会受到限制。本文的目的是首先制定一个可量化的测量组合主从系统可操作性的方法。接下来，我们为冗余主机器人开发了一个零空间控制器，该控制器采用所提出的可操作性指标，通过将冗余主机器人的运动学与从机器人的运动学相匹配来提高遥操作任务的性能。零空间控制器调制主机器人的冗余自由度，以将其可操纵椭圆体（ME）重塑为从机器人的 ME。ME是机器人运动学的几何解释。通过重塑主机器人的可操作性，我们匹配主机器人和从机器人的运动学。我们证明，通过使用冗余主机器人，我们能够增强主从系统的可操作性，并更直观地将从机器人的灵巧度传递给用户。进行仿真和实验研究以验证所提出的控制策略的性能。结果表明，通过采用所提出的可操作性指数，我们可以增强用户对手术机器人的力/速度的控制，并最大限度地减少用户对远程操作任务的控制工作。