Authors:
Martin Kibsgaard
and
Martin Kraus
Affiliation:
Aalborg University, Denmark
Keyword(s):
Augmented Reality, Latency, Teleoperation, Telepresence, Medical Training, Robot-assisted Surgery.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Environments
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Hardware Technologies for Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Environments
;
Interactive Environments
Abstract:
Minimal latency is important for augmented reality systems and teleoperation interfaces as even small increases
in latency can affect user performance. Previously, we have developed an augmented reality system
that can overlay stereoscopic video streams with computer graphics in order to improve visual communication
in training for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery with da Vinci surgical systems. To make sure that
our augmented reality system provides the best possible user experience, we investigated the video latency of
the da Vinci surgical system and how the components of our system affect the overall latency. To measure the
photon-to-photon latency, we used a microcontroller to determine the time between the activation of a light-emitting
diode in front of the endoscopic camera and the corresponding increase in intensity of the surgeon’s
display as measured by a phototransistor. The latency of the da Vinci S surgical system was on average 62 ms.
None of the comp
onents of our overlay system (separately or combined) significantly affected the latency.
However, the latency of the assistant’s monitor increased by 14 ms. Passing the video streams through CPU or
GPU memory increased the latency to 147 ms and 256 ms, respectively.
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