Bi-modal assistance functions and their effect on user perception and movement coordination with telesurgery systems

Aiming to ascertain the effects of uni- and bi-modal (visuo-haptic) assistance functions on movement coordination with a teleoperated surgical system (DLR´s MiroSurge), an experimental user study was conducted with 36 participants. Since the literature suggests a link between task performance with assistance functions and certain user perceptions, the participants´ preferences and perceptions of the assistance functions´ helpfulness were also of interest. The results indicate that more users considered the bi-modal assistance helpful than the uni-modal assistance, even though this was not supported by quantitative measures of task performance. Overall, haptic assistance was preferred to visual assistance, presumably as it is considered less obtrusive. The results of this study offer important implications for the design of user assistance functions in teleoperation systems.