A Dual-User Teleoperated Surgery Training Scheme Based on Virtual Fixture

The widespread use of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) demands an appropriate framework to train novice surgeons (trainees) to perform MIS. One of the effective ways to establish a cooperative training system is to use virtual fixtures. In this paper, a guiding virtual fixture is proposed to correct the movements of the trainee according to trainer hand motion performing a real MIS surgery. The proposed training framework utilizes the position signals of trainer to modify incorrect movements of the trainee which leads to shaping the trainee's muscle memory. Thus, after enough training sessions the trainee gains sufficient experience to perform the surgical task without any further help from the trainer. The passivity approach is utilized to analyze the stability of system. Simulation results are also presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.