Patent ID: 9662174
Date: 2017-05-30
CPC Classifications: A61B,A61F,B25J,G05B,Y10S

Claim:
1. A method of cooperative control of a surgical tool, comprising: providing a surgical tool to be manipulated during an operation; measuring interaction forces between the surgical tool and tissue of a region of interest; measuring interaction forces between a surgeon and a handle of the surgical tool; and actively guiding, by a cooperatively controlled robot, the surgical tool by creating a direction-dependent bias in the response of the cooperatively controlled robot to said measured interaction forces between said surgeon and said handle of said surgical tool based on said measured interaction forces between said surgical tool and tissue of said region of interest, wherein actively guiding the surgical tool comprises applying a limit on directional tool forces according to wherein {dot over (x)} is the velocity, f lim is a limit of the interaction forces between a tip of the surgical tool and the tissue of a region of interest, f t is the measured interaction forces between the tip of the surgical tool and the tissue of a region of interest, and wherein a virtual spring of length l lim is used to ensure stability at the limit boundary.