Laparoscopic robot manipulators

Since 1996 robotic camera manipulators have been used at the University Hospital of Trondheim, and today the hospital have three different robots. Two from Armstrong Healtcare Ltd. and one from ComputerMotion Inc. The main advantage of these robots are their ability to keep a steady non shaking picture, labour saving and a direct view control. The steady picture reduce fatigue during long procedures and dramatically improve image quality while transferring the pictures through ISDN lines. A steady picture is of great importance for telemanipulatin, education and documentation. Two of the robots are controlled by the head movement of the surgeon. This is a simple, safe and intuitive way of controlling robot movement, but some practice is required. The last robot is voice operated. The surgeon give simple commands like "right" or "out" to make the robot move, and thus imitate the conversation between the surgeon and the nurse. Since the bandwidth of these robots is low, there is no technical problems in telemanipulating the robot. One of the robots have these option. Experienced surgeons is able to remotely control the robot from their own office and advice less experienced surgeons in the OR. This is valuable in a sparse populated country as Norway with several small hospitals far away from the expert surgeons at the larger hospitals in the cities.