Automatic robot-world calibration in an optical-navigated surgical robot system and its application for oral implant placement

Purpose Robot-world calibration, used to precisely determine the spatial relation between optical tracker and robot, is regarded as an essential step for optical-navigated surgical robot system to improve the surgical accuracy. However, these methods are complicated with numerous computation. Therefore, a more efficient method of a robot-world calibration is necessary. Methods A fully automatic robot-world calibration was proposed and applied in a surgical robot system for oral implant placement. Making full usage of the movement characteristics of a tandem robot, the least square fitting algorithm was implemented to calculate the relationship between the tool center point of the robot and the robot reference frame, with the robot-world calibration matrix obtained as result. Results The experiment was designed to verify the accuracy of the robot-world calibration. The average distance deviation was 1.11 mm, and the average angle deviation was 0.99°. From the animal experiment on the pig maxilla, the entry, apical and angle deviation of the surgical robot system were 1.44 ± 1.01 mm, 1.68 ± 0.76 mm, 1.01 ± 1.06°, respectively. Conclusion The surgical robot system for oral implant placement with our robot-world calibration maintains a high precision. Besides, the operation range of the surgical tool is no longer limited by the visual range of the optical tracking device. Hence, it is unnecessary to adjust the optical tracking device for the planned implant trajectories to different positions and directions.