A two-layer trilateral teleoperation architecture for mentoring in surgical training

In this paper we propose a novel trilateral dual-master-single-slave teleoperation control architecture that can be used for the training of novice surgeons in surgical procedures. Starting from the concept of energy tank, we propose a flexible and stable trilateral interconnection over a delayed communication channel between the masters and the slave. Exploiting the flexibility provided by the controller, we design a training strategy for novice surgeons. The proposed architecture is experimentally validated.