Robot-Assisted Surgery

Robot-assisted surgery (RAS) with an intersecting project between the areas of »Cutting« and »Filtering«. In RAS, researchers from medicine, human-computer interaction, design, and cultural history work closely together to explore potential strategies for effectively integrating automated decision-making into human-centered interactive surgical systems.

Contemporary RAS are advanced filtering technologies that connect surgeons and patients in novel ways and further involve engineers, computer scientists, and designers. Emerging from these actors, we understand RAS as engines of difference situated in specific sensory and cross-cultural contexts challenging global political, legal, and technological frameworks.

In RAS systems, surgeons and robots collaborate to translate human actions into machine movements, as in telemanipulation systems. The next generation of RAS systems (e.g., the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot by Johns Hopkins University) are fully automated robots, which always implies artificial intelligence that takes over former human tasks and decisions. However, we know from other application domains that increased automation poses several challenges. The coupling of agency and automation presents essential challenges for responsible design and engineering.

In previous research, we have explored ways to visually provide surgeons with additional patient information using augmented reality technologies. Furthermore, we have investigated challenges from increased automation, such as human-machine collaboration concerning human decision-making. For example, we proposed and tested a methodological approach to evaluate human-machine collaboration applications. We explored interpretability in providing machine learning results and examined sense-making explanation strategies for non-technical experts.

In our RAS project, we specify different design dimensions of a human-robot collaboration. Methodologically, we build on the »Research through Design« approach. This approach makes evolutionary prototyping fundamental, combined with participatory design concepts such as »Speculative Enactments,» to capture various configurations of possible human-robot collaborations. Each configuration represents a viable RAS setup. Nevertheless, we carefully prototype both the envisioned collaboration and the socio-material configurations. By doing so, we aim to understand how different configurations influence decision-making processes informed by implicit human knowledge.

Based on this, our work program is divided into four phases: first, establishing a theoretical foundation for socio-material practices; second, specifying a conceptual framework that encompasses the perspectives of surgery, informatics, design, and cultural history; third, prototyping configurations and their evaluation (based on situational analysis); and finally, deriving recommendations for responsible design and policy implications. We organize these phases in an iterative process that may involve several cycles and represent the overlaps between »Cutting« and »Filtering.« For example, in »Mastering Digital Cutting« and »Soft Collision, « we will pursue a prototype-based working mode. The goal is to create tangible interfaces through speculative prototyping to enhance human-robot collaboration.