Development of the airway management training system WKA-4: For improved high-fidelity reproduction of real patient conditions, and improved tongue and mandible mechanisms

In recent years advanced robotic technology has seen more use in the medical field to assist in the development of efficient training systems. Such training systems must fulfill the following criteria: they must provide quantitative information, must simulate the real-world conditions of the task, and assure training effectiveness. We developed Waseda Kyotokagaku Airway series to fulfill all of those requirements. The WKA series we had developed does not consider external appearance such as patient skin, or internal appearance such as the pharynx, larynx, and esophagus. Moreover, the tongue mechanism of the previous system can not precisely measure the force applied by medical devices and cannot simulate muscle stiffness. In addition, the mandible mechanism of the previous system could not adequately reproduce various airway difficulties or apply force control. For these reasons, we propose the WKA-4, which has high-fidelity simulated human anatomy, and we have improved the mechanism over the previous system. We have also attached a lung to the proposed system to improve simulation of the real-world conditions of the task. In this paper, we present how to design several organs with various embedded sensors and actuators, for a conventional patient model with high-fidelity simulated human anatomy. We also present the control system for the WKA-4. Finally, we present a set of experiments carried out using doctors as subjects, and they gave their valuable opinions about our system.