A force‐sensing surgical tool with a proximally located force/torque sensor

Background Robotic surgery has seen a rapid increase in popularity in the last few decades because advantages such as increased accuracy and dexterity can be realized. These systems still lack force‐feedback, where such a capability is believed to be beneficial to the surgeon and can improve safety. Method In this paper a force‐feedback enabled surgical robotic system is described in which the developed force‐sensing surgical tool is discussed in detail. The developed surgical tool makes use of a proximally located force/torque sensor, which, in contrast to a distally located sensor, requires no miniaturization or sterilizability. Results Experimental results are presented, and indicate high force sensing accuracies with errors <0.09 N. Conclusions It is shown that developing a force‐sensing surgical tool utilizing a proximally located force/torque sensor is feasible, where a tool outer diameter of 12 mm can be achieved. For future work it is desired to decrease the current tool outer diameter to 10 mm. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.