The Acrobot^® system for total knee replacement

A “hands‐on” robotic system for total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is presented. Computed tomography (CT) based software is used to accurately plan the procedure pre‐operatively. Intra‐operatively, the surgeon guides a small, special‐purpose robot, called Acrobot^®, which is mounted on a gross positioning device. The Acrobot uses active constraint control, which constrains the motion to a pre‐defined region, and thus allows the surgeon to safely cut the knee bones to fit a TKR prosthesis with high precision. A non‐invasive anatomical registration method is used. The system has undergone early clinical trials with very promising outcomes.