Surface tracking-based surgical robot system for drilling operation and control method

A method for performing a drilling operation on a subject with a surgical robot system, comprising the steps of:

• providing a surface tracking-based surgical robot system comprising a surface scanner, a workstation, and a surgical robot, the surgical robot comprising a robot arm having a surgical tool attached to a distal end of the robot arm, the surgical tool comprising a surgical drill or a drill guide;
• acquiring 3D image data of a target surgery area and planning a surgical path on this 3D image data;
• extracting surface geometry of the target surgery area from the 3D image data to produce surface geometry data;
• positioning the surface scanner so that the target surgery area can be viewed by the surface scanner;
• positioning the robot arm so that the drill guide can be viewed by the surface scanner;
• selecting the target surgery area by creating a contour of the target surgery area from color 3D image data obtained from the surface scanner using a graphical user interface of the workstation;
• registering the robot arm to the surface scanner;
• calculating a robot movement quantity using a feedback control method according to a relative spatial relationship between the surgical path and the surgical tool, wherein the robot movement quantity comprises a translational component and a rotational component;
• repeating the previous step until an alignment error between the surgical tool and the surgical path is below a preset threshold, thereby aligning the surgical tool to the surgical path;
• moving the surgical tool with the robot arm in a position and direction corresponding to the surgical path using the robot movement quantity when the alignment error between the surgical tool and the surgical path is below the preset threshold, thereby performing the drilling operation.