The concept of spatial motion restriction zones in a robot-assisted surgical system

The development of robotics and medicine in recent years leads to increasing mutual integration of these two disciplines. The use of specialized robotic solutions in medicine poses new challenges, including the issue of safety. The paper analyzes existing solutions aimed at improving safety in medical robotics. The concept of spatial motion restriction zones—areas of space affecting the process of robot-assisted surgery and designed to minimize risks for the patient is proposed. Various applications of such zones are considered, such as: creating an optimal medical tool path when planning an operation, an adaptive movement restriction during manual manipulator control, including limiting maximum velocity. An approach to adaptively changing the parameters of motion restriction zones is presented, and possible data sources for this change are considered. A technique is introduced for using a hybrid motion restriction zone, combining several zones into a single complex system with various types of interaction. Approaches to manual control of a collaborative robot, including the use of force–torque sensors, are considered.