Human computer interfaces of a system for robotic heart surgery

In this paper a system for robotic heart surgery is presented, which provides force feedback and semi-automatic performance of certain surgical tasks. In order to operate this system, a variety of human-computer interactions are necessary for which we have implemented and evaluated corresponding interfaces. Since we are dealing with a telepresence system, it is essential to provide the user with as much immersion as possible. This comprises at least interfaces for manual input, vision and haptics. The main focus of the following paragraphs will be on an interface for interaction with the robotic system. This interface is based on a keyframing approach like it is used in computer animation. The user can interact with a realistic 3D-model of the scenario. Within this virtual environment it is possible to drag the end-effectors of the system to certain positions and save them as keyframes. Afterwards, different interpolation techniques can be used to accomplish movements from keyframe to keyframe. Since not all configurations within the virtual environment are technically feasible, inverse kinematics and collision detection prevents the user from executing harmful movements. Beside this offline planning of trajectories, the proposed interface is also capable of real-time interactions with the robotic system.