Models of human-centered automation in a debridement task

In robot-assisted surgery, manipulation tasks can be achieved through collaboration among robotic and human agents. Collaboration models can potentially include multiple agents working towards a shared objective - a scenario referred to as multilateral manipulation. In this work, we examine multilateral manipulation in the task of debridement: removing dead tissue or damaged tissue fragments to allow remaining healthy tissue to heal. We extended our previously developed multilateral manipulation software framework to the task of debridement and implemented four different collaboration models: (1) fully autonomous debridement, (2) shared control between a human and robotic agent, (3) supervised control where the operator identifies foreign bodies to be excised, and (4) teleoperation. We demonstrate these collaboration models with the RAVEN-II robot, an open-architecture surgical robot with two cable-driven 7-DOF arms. Each collaboration model included methods to remove foreign bodies from the field of view of a stereoscopic camera setup. Results indicate tradeoffs in experiment duration, hardware requirements, and safety implications among the four collaboration models.