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Experimental evaluation of magnified haptic feedback for robot‐assisted needle insertion and palpation
Author(s) -
Meli Leonardo,
Pacchierotti Claudio,
Prattichizzo Domenico
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the international journal of medical robotics and computer assisted surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.556
H-Index - 53
eISSN - 1478-596X
pISSN - 1478-5951
DOI - 10.1002/rcs.1809
Subject(s) - haptic technology , palpation , computer science , robot , artificial intelligence , computer vision , simulation , human–computer interaction , medicine , surgery
Background Haptic feedback has been proven to play a key role in enhancing the performance of teleoperated medical procedures. However, due to safety issues, commercially‐available medical robots do not currently provide the clinician with haptic feedback. Methods This work presents the experimental evaluation of a teleoperation system for robot‐assisted medical procedures able to provide magnified haptic feedback to the clinician. Forces registered at the operating table are magnified and provided to the clinician through a 7‐DoF haptic interface. The same interface is also used to control the motion of a 6‐DoF slave robotic manipulator. The safety of the system is guaranteed by a time‐domain passivity‐based control algorithm. Results Two experiments were carried out on stiffness discrimination (during palpation and needle insertion) and one experiment on needle guidance. Conclusions Our haptic‐enabled teleoperation system improved the performance with respect to direct hand interaction of 80%, 306%, and 27% in stiffness discrimination through palpation, stiffness discrimination during needle insertion, and guidance, respectively.