Force Feedback and Sensory Substitution for Robot-Assisted Surgery

Abstract

It is hypothesized that the lack of haptic (force and tactile) feedback presented to the surgeon is a limiting factor in the performance of teleoperated robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery. This chapter reviews the technical challenges of creating force feedback in robot-assisted surgical systems and describes recent results in creating and evaluating the effectiveness of this feedback in mock surgical tasks. In the design of a force-feedback teleoperator, the importance of hardware design choices and their relationship to controller design are emphasized. In addition, the practicality and necessity of force feedback in all degrees of freedom of the teleoperator are considered in the context of surgical tasks and the operating room environment. An alternative to direct force feedback to the surgeon’s hands is sensory substitution/augmented reality, in which graphical displays are used to convey information about the forces between the surgical instrument and the patient, or about the mechanical properties of the patient’s tissue. Experimental results demonstrate that the effectiveness of direct and graphical force feedback depend on the nature of the surgical task and the experience level of the surgeon.