A surgeon's physiological hand tremor can significantly impact the outcome of delicate and precise retinal surgery, such as retinal vein cannulation (RVC) and epiretinal membrane peeling. Robot-assisted eye surgery technology provides ophthalmologists with advanced capabilities such as hand tremor cancellation, hand motion scaling, and safety constraints that enable them to perform these otherwise challenging and high-risk surgeries with high precision and safety. Steady-Hand Eye Robot (SHER) with cooperative control mode can filter out surgeon's hand tremor, yet another important safety feature, that is, minimizing the contact force between the surgical instrument and sclera surface for avoiding tissue damage cannot be met in this control mode. Also, other capabilities, such as hand motion scaling and haptic feedback, require a teleoperation control framework. In this work, for the first time, we implemented a teleoperation control mode incorporated with an adaptive sclera force control algorithm using a PHANTOM Omni haptic device and a force-sensing surgical instrument equipped with Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors attached to the SHER 2.1 end-effector. This adaptive sclera force control algorithm allows the robot to dynamically minimize the tool-sclera contact force. Moreover, for the first time, we compared the performance of the proposed adaptive teleoperation mode with the cooperative mode by conducting a vessel-following experiment inside an eye phantom under a microscope.

翻译：外科医生的生理性手部震颤会显著影响精细视网膜手术（如视网膜静脉插管和视网膜前膜剥离）的成败。机器人辅助眼科手术技术为眼科医生提供了手部震颤消除、手部运动缩放和安全约束等先进功能，使其能够以高精度和高安全性完成这些原本具有挑战性且高风险的手术。采用协同控制模式的稳手眼机器人（SHER）可滤除外科医生的手部震颤，但该控制模式无法满足另一重要安全功能——最小化手术器械与巩膜表面之间的接触力以避免组织损伤。此外，手部运动缩放和触觉反馈等其他功能需要主从操作控制框架来实现。在本工作中，我们首次利用PHANTOM Omni触觉设备和安装在SHER 2.1末端执行器上配备光纤布拉格光栅（FBG）传感器的力传感手术器械，实现了融合自适应巩膜力控制算法的主从操作控制模式。该自适应巩膜力控制算法使机器人能够动态最小化器械-巩膜接触力。此外，我们首次通过显微镜下在眼模型内进行血管跟踪实验，比较了所提出的自适应主从操作模式与协同模式的性能。