Surgical Cockpit -- Multisensory/Multimodal Interfaces for Robotic Surgery

The ongoing military conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan are conducted under conditions quite different from previous conflicts and demonstrate the need to deploy skilled personnel equipped with advanced technology to provide medical and surgical attention as close as possible to the point of injury. A major problem is the occasional mismatch between the type of injury and the type of surgeon available to treat it. Telerobotic surgery is a means to mediate the narrow spectrum of available front line surgical expertise. If robust telerobotic capabilities were available, an expert surgeon could perform the critical step of an operation from the continental US while the solider was located anywhere around the globe. Our objective in this proposed project is to develop a multisensory and multimodal surgical cockpit (surgical console) enabling telesurgery capabilities which expand the range of surgical expertise to the level dictated by the type and nature of wounds in the battlefield.