Abstract
Background
Many surgical robotic interfaces allow users to interact with robots over a wide potential range of motion, yet variation in operator performance across a range of motion remains unexamined. This research identifies and explores a new construct, the surgeon's ‘comfortable working envelope’ within the available range of motion, as a factor in surgical robotic interface design.
Methods
Task accuracy and completion time for a simple aimed movement task were analysed as a function of participant hand positions obtained via infrared motion tracking.
Results
Hand positions outside the ‘comfortable working envelope’ led to a 20% increase in error magnitude. With respect to the overall input device range of motion, there were large variations in performance, up to 31% difference in error magnitude and 11% difference in movement time.
Conclusions
These results suggest that advanced surgical robots should have intelligent re‐indexing strategies. Alternatively, the robot's control gain should adaptively change with respect to hand position to normalize a surgeon's performance throughout his/her working volume. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.