Robot developed by UCLA graduate students is at cutting edge of surgical mentorship
Stephen Prince, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, demonstrates how to use the LapaRobot. Prince and fellow researcher Christopher Lim created the technology, which trains new surgeon students for the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery test.
Courtesy of Stephen Prince
By alexander moskowitz
March 1, 2012 1:43 a.m.
Aspiring surgeons may one day receive training over the Internet as a result of new technology recently developed by two UCLA graduate student researchers.
Mechanical engineering graduate researchers Stephen Prince and Christopher Lim have designed, prototyped and constructed a robot affectionately named the LapaRobot.
The device was created to train new surgeons for the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery test, with the instructor potentially hundreds of miles away, Prince said.
Laparoscopic surgery is a form of minimally invasive surgery on the abdomen in which small incisions are made in the place of a very large incision.
In order to obtain certification, surgeons must demonstrate mastery of the skills necessary to perform the surgery, using small, pincer-like tools to move objects around a peg board, cut a circle out of a piece of cloth or tie a knot.
The LapaRobot is built around a set of standard telescopic rods held up by a pair of robotic arms that guide the trainee’s movements.
For the system to work, two LapaRobots must be connected through the Internet. One machine is operated by an experienced surgeon, while the other is operated by a student.
During the mentoring process, the machines engage in a “master-slave relationship,” meaning that one robot has superiority over the other. Movements on the trainee’s device can be overridden by the gestures of a skilled mentor.
This setup resembles the dual steering wheels used in a car during a driver’s education lesson. In this case, the driving instructor happens to be at a remote location.
The two machines are not connected through a direct line, but instead through the Internet, which exposes trainees and surgical mentors to network traffic.
Lim and Prince were required to accommodate their designs for delays in motor and video commands, they said. In the end, they minimized delays to less than 100 milliseconds with about 130 miles between robots, Lim said.
Reducing such delays is an important part of making the technology usable, said Erik Dutson, executive medical director of the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology and a clinical professor of surgery.
“If the trainee had to experience those types of delays that are inherent to a heavily used network, (training with LapaRobot) would be very difficult,” Dutson said.
The current version of the LapaRobot is the subject of Prince’s doctoral dissertation.
Prince and his colleagues are in the process of analyzing data collected in experimental tests to evaluate the machine’s effectiveness.
The purpose of the system is to train new surgeons who do not have access to an in-person mentor, Dutson said. UCLA already has a credentialing center, so the technology would be used to allow mentors at UCLA to extend their teaching abilities outside of campus and across the Internet.
If proven effective, the LapaRobot could be utilized in a broader variety of telementoring contexts, including the education of surgeons overseas, he said.
