Rendering Large-Area Deformable Tissue Haptics through Robotic Encountering Technology

Abstract:
New technological developments have led to improvements in surgical training. Advances in sensing, actuation, modeling lead to the use of virtual reality (VR) training systems tailored at specific surgical techniques. VR-based training programs are objective. Trainees can experiment endlessly and difficulty can be adjusted in line with the competency level. The last decade saw a myriad of VR training systems, some featuring haptic force feedback others without haptics. The vast majority of said systems are tackling minimal invasive or keyhole surgeries. In contrast, VR systems that tackle open surgery remain particularly scarce. This extended abstract introduces a novel approach for virtual reality training of surgical palpation tasks. The new approach exploits the benefits of robotic encountering which allows interacting with the trainee in a non-constraining fashion. Users can move their finger unrestricted in space. When reaching the virtual tissue the encountering robot provides a haptic cue that matches the feedback that would arise when touching real anatomical tissue. Experiments where users palpate a hard nodule submerged below a virtual tissue demonstrate the feasibility and the potential of the proposed approach to render virtual tissue over a large surface area.