Performance evaluation of haptic hand-controllers in a robot-assisted surgical system

Background This paper presents the experimental evaluation of three commercially available haptic hand‐controllers to evaluate which was more suitable to the participants. Methods Two surgeons and seven engineers performed two peg‐in‐hole tasks with different levels of difficulty. Each operator guided the end‐effector of a Kuka manipulator that held surgical forceps and was equipped with a surgical microscope. Sigma 7, HD2 and PHANToM Premium 3.0 hand‐controllers were compared. Ten measures were adopted to evaluate operators’ performances with respect to effort, speed and accuracy in completing a task, operator improvement during the tests, and the force applied by each haptic device. Results The best performance was observed with the Premium 3.0; the hand‐piece was able to be held in a similar way to that used by surgeons to hold conventional tools. Conclusions Hand‐controllers with a linkage structure similar to the human upper extremity take advantage of the inherent human brain connectome, resulting in improved surgeon performance during robotic‐assisted surgery. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.