Force and vibration assessment during bone grinding tasks: a preliminary study

Robot-assisted endoscopic endonasal neurosurgery could offer surgeons improved ergonomics and reduced fatigue during grinding tasks of the sphenoid bone. However, existing systems lack grinding tools and sufficient feedback, increasing the risk of soft tissue and nerve damage due to grinding overshoot. This preliminary study explores the variation in forces and vibrations experienced at the tip of a medical drill during automated grinding of a layered, bone-mimicking sample using an industrial robotic arm. The grinding was performed along fourteen curved strokes, simulating trajectories that surgeons use. Results show that the drill encounters significantly higher forces and increased vibrations when grinding through cancellous layers compared to cortical ones. Consistent with previous studies, spectral features of the vibration signals were found to be promising for distinguishing between different material layers. Future work will extend this study to investigate the effect of grinding-generated dust as well as training a machine learning model for transition layer detection.