Comparison of manual steering and steering via joystick of a flexible rhino endoscope.

Flexible endoscopes are used in ENT surgery for examination tasks in cases wherever rigid endoscopes are unsuitable to reach certain positions in the nasal cavity. Until today they are steered by hand and no robotized system has been put into clinical practice. One qualification a robot manipulator system has to fulfill to be accepted is not to create new disadvantages compared to the conventional method in surgery. An important factor is the time needed to steer the new system compared to the time needed to steer the conventional system. In this article a robot manipulator system and an experiment are presented to compare the particular times test persons need to perform a certain task. This approach offers the possibility to benchmark the developed robot manipulator system and future systems for flexible rhino endoscopes.