Sclera force control

This work aims to evaluate two variants of an adaptive force control scheme to mitigate the risk of unsafe scleral forces during robot-assisted eye surgery procedures. The robot and its dependencies were set up in an operating room, where we enrolled ten retina fellows and ophthalmology residents into a simulated procedure. The participants were asked to follow phantom retinal vessels using a custom force-sensing instrument, with and without robotic assistance. We demonstrate that the control methods can make the robot autonomously maintain the scleral forces at predetermined safe levels better than freehand manipulations, while the surgeon performs the surgical tasks. read more