Human factors in tele-inspection and tele-surgery: Cooperative manipulation under asynchronous video and control feedback

Abstract

A telesurgical model was developed for simulation experiments evaluating cooperative manipulation between a paramedic local to the patient and a physician operating through a telerobot. In this study we tested the hypothesis that sending the signals from a remote telesurgical setup asynchronously (sending the telemanipulator signals ahead of the video signals, which were delayed because of the time it took for compression/decompression) improve controller stability and favorably affect task performance by the medical team. We found essentially no difference in task performance between the synchronous and asynchronous transmission of the telesurgical signals when the physician operated the laparoscope and the assistant operated the laparotomy tools. But with asynchronous transmission we found a significant improvement (31% to 60%) in task completion time when the physician operated any of the laparotomy tools.