Background: Neonate patients have a reduced thoracic cavity, making thoracoscopic procedures even more challenging than their adult counterparts.
Methods: We evaluated five control strategies for robot-assisted thoracoscopic surgical looping in simulations and experiments with a physical robotic system in a neonate surgical phantom. The strategies are composed of state-of-the-art constrained optimization and a novel looping force feedback term.
Results: All control strategies allowed users to successfully perform looping. A user study in simulation showed that the proposed strategy was superior in terms of Physical demand and task duration . The cumulative sum analysis of inexperienced users shows that the proposed looping force feedback can speed up the learning. Results with surgeons did not show a significant difference among control strategies.
Conclusions: Assistive strategies in looping show promise and further work is needed to extend these benefits to other subtasks in robot-aided surgical suturing.
Keywords: mechatronics.
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