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Background Robots are gradually becoming intelligent tools for surgeons in computer assisted orthopedic surgery. A hands-on robot combining CT-free navigation software and coordinated control has been designed for total knee arthroplasty. Methods The hands-on robot is under bilateral force control so that the robot not only follows the force commands from the operator but also shapes the reflected force back to the operator. The proposed coordinated control also defines three operating modes to fulfill intelligent bone cutting by tuning appropriate scaling to the admittance gains. Results Experimental results demonstrated assistive, resistant and emergent actions to meet various bone cutting conditions by the coordinated controller. Conclusions The proposed coordinated controller enables the robot to perform bone cutting more safely, rapidly and accurately compared with being performed by manual bone saw. The intelligent bone cutting has been successfully verified by a cadaver test. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Robot assisted surgery can be safer than conventional counterpart. In total knee replacement, an intelligent tool with cooperative force control equipped by the proposed bone cutting through detection is advantageous to prevent from damaging surrounding soft tissue than by conventional method or computer navigation method. In this paper the developed auto-detection bone cutting through is able to achieve accurate bone cutting with only the information of cutter's motion and forces, no medical images are required. This approach can be a low cost solution to accomplish safe and accurate bone cutting to complement an imageless navigation system and results in a very effective robot-assisted surgical system.