抄録
In operating rooms of large hospitals in the developed countries, the problem of the shortage of scrub nurses in operation rooms has become serious. To compensate for this shortage, we have proposed Scrub Nurse Robot (SNR) system to assist a surgeon in exchanging surgical instruments during endoscopic and laparoscopic surgery. On design of the First SNR, motion capture system in an operating room to collect and analyze data of motions of a surgeon and a scrub nurse is constructed. Specifications of the First SNR are decided by consideration of the data of motion analysis. We evaluate exchanging motions of the First SNR using motion capture software and recognize that R-1 is faster than a human scrub nurse in helping a surgeon exchange an electric knife and a blood aspirator, which are used most frequently during operations, although R-2 is not so faster in the case of the other instruments. And we also recognize that the First SNR's minimum working space is 1.68 [m2]. Then, we develop 2nd SNR (ASULA) which is made its minimum working space small to 0.31 [m2] to be used in smalloperating rooms. ASULA is designed as one robot changing from 2 of the First SNR. ASULA recovers all of works that the First SNRs do, and adapts to the other functions, e.g. instruments cleaning system which is one of the most important task of scrub nurses. As a user interface of ASULA, voice recognition and reproducing system is installed. We construct a voice answering database. It is a data aggregate of words which are used in videotaped conversation between a surgeon and a scrub nurse during operations and which seems to be necessary. For the development the robot that exchanges surgical instruments with a surgeon, motion analysis to recognize a variety of data of a surgeon and a scrub nurse are important for unerring judgment for deciding the best specifications of the robot and the construction of the useful interfaces. Therefore, our development of SNR is one of the system integration pursuing a contribution for medical field by an assimilation of measurement field and mechanical design.
