Abstract
In this paper, an orthopedic robot-assisted drilling system is presented. The system consists of a six degree of freedom robot manipulator equipped with a multi axis force/torque sensor and an electrical drilling tool attached to the robot end-effector. The purpose of the system is to enable the orthopedic surgeons to drill the patient bone using the robot manipulator and automatically detect the bone breakthrough during bone fixation process. The breakthrough is detected by measuring the forces acting on the drilling tool tip. This will reduce/eliminate the need for X-rays imaging used in traditional bone fixation. The system has been tested on sheep bone. The result has shown that, the bone drilling operation can be handled by a robot manipulator to improve the quality of the drilling operation. With this system, the bone breakthrough can be easily detected and further damage of the healthy patient tissue would be avoided. This will lead to fast patient recovery and short hospital stay.