Implementation and Assessment of an Augmented Training Curriculum for Surgical Robotics

--The integration of high-level assistance algorithms in surgical robotics training curricula may be beneficial in establishing a more comprehensive and robust skillset for aspiring surgeons, improving their clinical performance as a consequence. This work presents the development and validation of a haptic-enhanced Virtual Reality simulator for surgical robotics training, featuring 8 surgical tasks that the trainee can interact with thanks to the embedded physics engine. This virtual simulated environment is augmented by the introduction of high-level haptic interfaces for robotic assistance that aim at re-directing the motion of the trainee's hands and wrists toward targets or away from obstacles, and providing a quantitative performance score after the execution of each training exercise. An experimental study shows that the introduction of enhanced robotic assistance into a surgical robotics training curriculum improves performance during the training process and, crucially, promotes the transfer of the acquired skills to an unassisted surgical scenario, like the clinical one. The increase of surgical robotics procedures in the last decade demands a high number of trained surgeons [1] [2], capable of teleoperating such advanced and complex systems and at the same time able to take advantage of the benefits of Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (RAMIS) safely and effectively.