Effects of viewing and orientation on path following in a medical teleoperation environment

The use of virtual and augmented reality techniques in medicine is rapidly increasing particularly in the area of minimal access surgery. Such surgery is a form of teleoperation in which accurate perception of depth and orientation, navigation, and interaction with the operative space are vital. Virtual and augmented reality techniques will allow us to produce new views of the operative site and introduce extra information into the scene such as safe paths for instruments to follow etc. A path following task is developed and human factors issues are addressed by varying viewing conditions (standard mono, stereo, multiple views and tool-linked view), presence or absence of haptic feedback, and orientation of the task. The results show that performance is improved with haptic feedback, but not by the various viewing conditions and is significantly worse for side aligned orientations.