Exploring current communication frameworks for medical teleoperation

Currently and as a future trend, many robotic systems are being adapted to allow medical procedures such as surgeries, diagnostics, and monitoring to be conducted remotely. The integration of these systems allows an alternative for traditional procedures in health to be executed more efficiently over distance. Since the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and the worldwide imposed physical distancing restrictions, the use of teleoperation systems became even more relevant. Although this is now a reality, there are still some major drawbacks to teleoperation, mostly due to communication failure, transmission delays, limited bandwidth, and security breaches. To mitigate the communication problems over greater distances, many authors are giving now positive feedback on the integration of the recent 5G cellular technology in their systems. This paper aims to present a review of the relevant literature targeting the communication protocols and frameworks used in teleoperation systems since 2016. It will focus on showing insights and highlight the key technologies used for the current telerobotic communication frameworks for both short and long-distance systems.