US 5,631,973 · Granted 1997-05-20

The Patent Behind Remote Surgery's Feeling of 'Being There'

Imagine controlling a robot's arm from across the world, but seeing the workspace through the robot's eyes so perfectly that your brain feels like you're actually there. This patent captures the magic: sensors that track the camera's position, software that transforms the video feed to match your hand movements, so the operator experiences what engineers call 'telepresence.'

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a system where a camera mounted near a remote manipulator (robot arm) tracks its own position, and software running on a processor continuously adjusts the video image displayed to the operator so that it stays aligned with the end effector's perspective. When the operator moves the hand controller, the image rotates, translates, and corrects for perspective in real time to maintain the illusion that the operator is looking out through the robot's position. This combination of position sensing, image transformation, and synchronized hand control is what's protected.

Why it matters

This patent addresses one of the fundamental challenges in remote surgery and telemanipulation: overcoming the sensory disconnect between an operator and a distant robot. Before telepresence correction, operators had to mentally translate camera angles and manipulator movements, making precise surgical or delicate tasks exhausting and error-prone. By locking down the method for camera-position sensing and real-time perspective transformation, this patent created a technical foundation that influenced how surgical robots and remote manipulation systems would work for decades.

Real-world use

Surgeons using remote robotic surgery systems experience this when they tilt their head or the surgical camera while controlling instruments—the image adjusts instantly so the surgical field stays centered and properly oriented, making it feel like they're directly inside the patient's body.

Original USPTO abstract

In a telemanipulation system for manipulating objects located in a workspace at a remote worksite by an operator from an operator's station, such as in a remote surgical system, the remote worksite having a manipulator with an end effector for manipulating an object at the workspace, such as a body cavity, a controller including a hand control at the control operator's station for remote control of the manipulator, an image capture device, such as a camera, and image output device for reproducing a viewable real-time image, the improvement wherein a position sensor associated with the image capture device senses position relative to the end effector and a processor transforms the viewable real-time image into a perspective image with correlated manipulation of the end effector by the hand controller such that the operator can manipulate the end effector and the manipulator as if viewing the workspace in true presence. Image transformation according to the invention includes translation, rotation and perspective correction.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,631,973
Filing date: 1994-05-05
Grant date: 1997-05-20
Assignee: Sri International
Inventor(s): GREEN; PHILIP S.
CPC class: A61B34/76

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