US 6,364,888 · Granted 2002-04-02

How Surgeons Control Robot Hands From Across the Room

Imagine controlling a robot's hand from far away using your own hand—but the robot's hand is pointing a different direction than yours. This patent solves that alignment problem by letting surgeons reorient their control hand to match what the robot is actually seeing through its camera, so everything lines up perfectly.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a method for synchronizing the orientation of a surgeon's hand-held control device with the orientation of a remote surgical robot's end effector (tool) as viewed on a monitor. Specifically, it protects the process of pausing the robot, measuring its current orientation relative to the camera, calculating what orientation the surgeon's hand needs to move to in order to match, and then moving the surgeon's control hand into that position to establish alignment—all without the robot moving during this adjustment.

Why it matters

Remote-controlled surgical robots require precise hand-eye coordination between the surgeon and the machine. If the surgeon's hand orientation doesn't match the robot's orientation relative to the camera view, the surgeon's movements can become unintuitive and dangerous. This patent addresses a fundamental usability and safety challenge in telerobotic surgery by ensuring the surgeon's intuitive hand movements directly correspond to the robot's actions on the surgical field.

Real-world use

A surgeon in California controlling a robotic arm performing surgery on a patient in New York uses this alignment method to reorient their control hand until the camera view shows everything locked in sync before proceeding with the delicate procedure.

Original USPTO abstract

This invention relates to establishing alignment or a desired orientational relationship between a master and a slave of a telerobotic system. The invention can advantageously be used in a surgical apparatus. A method of establishing a desired orientational relationship between a hand-held part of a master control and an end effector of an associated slave as viewed in an image displayed on a viewer is provided. The method includes causing the end effector to remain stationary, determining a current orientation of the end effector relative to a viewing end of an image capturing device operatively associated with the viewer and determining a desired corresponding orientation of the hand-held part of the master control relative to the viewer, at which orientation the desired orientational relationship between the hand-held part of the master control and the end effector would be established. The method further includes causing the hand-held part of the master control to be moved into the desired corresponding orientation. The invention extends to a control system arranged to cause the desired orientational relationship between the hand-held part of the master control and the end effector of the associated slave, as viewed in the displayed imaged on the viewer, to be established when operative control between the master control and the slave has been interrupted.

Patent details

Publication number: US 6,364,888
Filing date: 1999-04-07
Grant date: 2002-04-02
Assignee: Intuitive Surgical, Inc.
Inventor(s): NIEMEYER GUNTER D., NOWLIN WILLIAM C., GUTHART GARY S.
CPC class: A61B1/00149

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