Method for verifying the integrity of a master device of a master-slave robotic system for medical or surgical teleoperation and related robotic system

A robotic system for medical or surgical teleoperation comprising:

• a master device, mechanically ungrounded and configured to be hand-held by a surgeon during surgery, and to detect a manual command of a surgeon and generate a respective first electrical command signal, said master device comprising a body comprising two rigid parts constrained to relatively rotate and/or translate with respect to a common axis;
• at least one slave device, or slave robotic assembly, comprising at least one slave surgical instrument configured to operate on a patient, in a manner controlled by the master device;
• a control unit provided with a computer, configured to receive said first electrical command signal from the master device, generate a second electrical command signal, based on the first electrical command signal, and provide the second electrical command signal to the slave robotic assembly, to actuate the at least one slave surgical instrument;
• wherein the system is configured to perform the following actions:
• measuring and/or detecting position vectors of at least two points, each of the at least two points belonging to one respective of said two rigid parts of said master device, and measuring and/or detecting evolution over time of said at least two position vectors;
• measuring and/or detecting an orientation of each of said at least two points, each orientation being expressed as a respective set of three numbers, and measuring and/or detecting evolution over time of said orientations;
• defining one or more constraints, or storing one or more predetermined constraints, said constraints being imposed by constructional or structural features of the master device, deriving from a difference between a number of degrees of freedom necessary to define a state of the master device and a number of information items detected, each constraint being associated with a mathematical relation which must be respected in a case of integrity of the master device;
• calculating mathematical relations associated with each of the constraints defined, based on said detected and/or measured position vectors and orientations and on the respective evolutions over time;
• determining a state of structural and/or functional integrity or non-integrity of the master device, based on a verification of whether or not the mathematical relations associated with each of the constraints defined are respected, utilizing the detected information related to the degrees of freedom that are redundant with respect to the information necessary to determine the state of the master device.