Design and Evaluation of a Foot-Controlled Robotic System for Endoscopic Surgery

In traditional endoscopic surgery, the surgeon manipulating the endoscopic instruments is supported by an assistant controlling the endoscope, where their coordination may be affected by communication errors. To address this issue, we introduce a foot interface controlled robotic endoscopic system, enabling the surgeon to simultaneously operate the endoscope and instruments. The system consists of a foot interface using four degrees of freedom (DoFs) foot gestures and a robotic driving system for a commercial flexible endoscope. The proposed robotic system was validated in teleoperation experiments performed by ten subjects, where foot teleoperation was compared with hand teleoperation and direct control of the endoscope with two hands. The participants could successfully teleoperate the endoscope with foot teleoperation and exhibited 40% faster task completion as with direct control. They found both foot and hand teleoperations comfortable and intuitive. Although hand teleoperation enabled the best performance, only foot teleoperation allows simultaneous control of three instruments.