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Background: Handheld surgical robots offer functionalities, such as active guidance, tremor suppression and force reflection, for surgeons to enhance their skill in manipulating surgical tools during medical intervention. In orthopedic surgery, the robot additionally has to offer sufficient rigidity and power for bone machining. The size and weight of the mechanical design, together with the control behaviour associated with involuntary hand motion, navigation and reflected force to the human, all influence the overall performance of an orthopedic handheld robot., Methods: The paper proposes a miniature and compact design for an embedded robot, which is a similar weight as a handpiece. Then, a shared controller is proposed to address the coupling among involuntary and voluntary hand motions, robot navigation, tool feedback forces and force artefacts from actuation., Results: The handheld robot is able to stabilize the drill positioning by removing involuntary tremors as well as reduce force artefacts from motor actuation in experiments involving pedicle tunnelling on a porcine spine., Conclusion: The paper has successfully realized a compact handheld orthopedic robot which provides high performance of usability, tremor suppression and force reflection for bone drilling., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Robots are gradually becoming intelligent tools for surgeons in computer assisted orthopedic surgery. A hands-on robot combining CT-free navigation software and coordinated control has been designed for total knee arthroplasty., Methods: The hands-on robot is under bilateral force control so that the robot not only follows the force commands from the operator but also shapes the reflected force back to the operator. The proposed coordinated control also defines three operating modes to fulfill intelligent bone cutting by tuning appropriate scaling to the admittance gains., Results: Experimental results demonstrated assistive, resistant and emergent actions to meet various bone cutting conditions by the coordinated controller., Conclusions: The proposed coordinated controller enables the robot to perform bone cutting more safely, rapidly and accurately compared with being performed by manual bone saw. The intelligent bone cutting has been successfully verified by a cadaver test., (Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Background: This paper presents a novel robot designed for reduction of lower limb fractures, with the additional features of automatic controlled flexion of the knee joint, individual traction of thigh and leg, and foot rotation. The aim of this design is to assist the orthopaedic surgeon to perform better fracture reduction through motor control, in contrast to current manual control, and the results of assessments of its functions on normal subjects are presented in this paper., Methods: The robot was designed to be mounted onto the operation table, and was controlled through open switch relay. Functional assessments were conducted on six healthy volunteers in terms of knee joint motion and lower limb traction; measurement of angle and distance was calculated from data obtained by a 3D ultrasonic motion system (Zebris(®) )., Results: The results showed a good correlation of the flexion angle between the robot and the subjects at the knee joint. In the traction tests, a steady lengthening of the proximal as well as the distal segment of the robot was observed, and a slight increase in subjects' limb length was also recorded, which might be due to distraction in the joint space., Conclusion: This automatic control fracture table has distinct features compared with the conventional ones, and it is believed to be of assistance to surgeons when performing fracture fixations., (Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)