ASTEMA: Design and preliminary performance assessment of a novel tele-microsurgery system

L Vanthournhout (1) , J Szewczyk (2) , J Duisit (1) , B Lengelé (1) , B Raucent (1) , B Herman (1)

1 UCL - Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain
2 ISIR - Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique

To overcome the challenges of reconstructive microsurgery, a teleoperated robot called ASTEMA was built to help surgeons performing microanastomoses. The surgeons’ needs are first analyzed then the design steps are summarized. This robot is composed of three orthogonal linear actuators and a spherical wrist with its remote center of motion at the instrument tip. Geometric model of the spherical wrist was calibrated through mathematical optimization in order to compensate for imperfections of machining and assembling. Two preliminary experiments were carried out to assess the ASTEMA performance. The first was performed with a simple circular position trajectory. The second was a complex angular trajectory. Results show a significant improvement of gesture precision with respect to manual trajectory execution. They also show that subjects instinctively compensate the errors from the non-ideal wrist, thanks to visual feedback from microscope.

Mots clés: telerobotics; microsurgery; medical devices; design methodology

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]; Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

L Vanthournhout, J Szewczyk, J Duisit, B Lengelé, B Raucent, et al.. ASTEMA: Design and preliminary performance assessment of a novel tele-microsurgery system. Mechatronics, 2022, ⟨10.1016/j.mechatronics.2021.102689⟩. ⟨hal-03606236⟩