By Brianna Wessling at The Robot Report
A surgeon can control two of this four-armed surgical robotics system’s arms with their hands and the other two with their feet. [Photo courtesy of EPFL]
Researchers at EPFL, a public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, have developed a four-armed surgical robotics system that allows surgeons to perform laparoscopic surgeries by controlling two of the robotic arms using haptic foot interfaces. The results were published in The International Journal of Robotics Research.The research was a collaboration between the research group REHAssist and the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA). It was led by EPFL Ph.D. students Jacob Hernandez and Walid Amanhoud, who developed a system that allows surgeons to control two robotic arms using haptic foot interfaces with five degrees of freedom. In this setup, each of the surgeon’s hands controls a ma…