Telerobotics is perhaps one of the oldest fields in robotics. Since its humble beginning in the 1940s when the first teleoperator was designed, the focus had been primarily on the nuclear, space, and underwater applications until the 1980s. The recent advances in computing power and in communications have led to the emergence of new applications such as telesurgery, semiautonomous telerobotics,...

This paper presents the results of experiments examining the performance of a telesurgeon and an assistant local to the patient performing simulated laparoscopic tasks under a variety of time-delay conditions. Of particular interest is a comparison between the surgeon provided with audio/video and force feedbck synchronously with various time delays, and the surgeon performing asynchronously, w...

A telesurgical system with reliable force feedback can extend the application range of minimally invasive surgery to more complex procedures. For medical decisions that are primarily based on touch information, such as the localisation of a tumour or hidden arteries or the quality verification of a suture, surgeons mainly rely on their stiffness perception and discrimination abilities. This wor...

This thesis explored the potential performance benefits of enhancing depth cues in telepresence interfaces. A series of experiments addressed the role of binocular disparity and motion parallax in teleoperators’ performance. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that the effects of enhancing binocular disparity and motion parallax depend upon the information demands of a given task. Enhanced depth c...

BACKGROUND There is a growing interest in teledermatology in today's clinical practice, but the maturity of the evaluation research of this technology is still unclear. OBJECTIVES This systematic review describes the maturity of teledermatology evaluation research over time and explores what kind of teledermatology outcome measures have been evaluated. METHODS Systematic review of literatur...

The growth of medical robotics since the mid1980s has been striking. From a few initial efforts in stereotactic brain surgery, orthopaedics, endoscopic surgery, microsurgery, and other areas, the field has expanded to include commercially marketed, clinically deployed systems, and a robust and exponentially expanding research community. This chapter will discuss some major themes and illustrate...

BACKGROUND The advantages of surgical robots and manipulators are well recognized in the clinical and technical community. Precision, accuracy and the potential for telesurgery are the prime motivations in applying advanced robot technology in surgery. In this paper critical interactions between Magnetic Resonance Imaging equipment and mechatronic devices are discussed and a novel Magnetic Reso...

The growth of medical robotics since the mid1980s has been striking. From a few initial efforts in stereotactic brain surgery, orthopaedics, endoscopic surgery, microsurgery, and other areas, the field has expanded to include commercially marketed, clinically deployed systems, and a robust and exponentially expanding research community. This chapter will discuss some major themes and illustrate...

Ubiquitous access to high-level healthcare (u-Health) requires increasing use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions. Telemedicine describes the use of ICT for the delivery of medical services. It aims at equal access to medical expertise irrespective of the geographical location of the person in need. New developments in ICT have enabled the transmission of medical images ...

The growth of medical robotics since the mid1980s has been striking. From a few initial efforts in stereotactic brain surgery, orthopaedics, endoscopic surgery, microsurgery, and other areas, the field has expanded to include commercially marketed, clinically deployed systems, and a robust and exponentially expanding research community. This chapter will discuss some major themes and illustrate...