Teach and Playback Training Device for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Recent technological progress offers the opportunity to significantly transform conventional open surgical procedures in ways that allow minimally invasive surgery (MIS) to be accomplished by specific operative instruments’ entry into the body through key-sized holes rather than large incisions. Although MIS offers an opportunity for less trauma and quicker recovery, thereby reducing length of hospital stay and attendant costs, the complex nature of this procedure makes it difficult to master, not least because of the limited work area and constricted degree of freedom. Accordingly, this research seeks to design a Teach and Playback device that can aid surgical training by key-framing and then reproducing surgical motions. The result is an inexpensive and portable Teach and Playback laparoscopic training device that can record a trainer’s surgical motions and then play them back for trainees. Indeed, such a device could provide a training platform for surgical residents generally and would also be susceptible of many other applications for other robot-assisted tasks that might require complex motion training and control.