Abstract
Advancements in the study of the human sense of touch are fueling the field of haptics. This is paving the way for augmenting sensory perception during object palpation in tele-surgery and reproducing the sensed information through tactile feedback. Here, we present a novel tele-palpation apparatus that enables the user to detect nodules with various distinct stiffness buried in an ad-hoc polymeric phantom. The contact force measured by the platform was encoded using a neuromorphic model and reproduced on the index fingertip of a remote user through a haptic glove embedding a piezoelectric disk. We assessed the effectiveness of this feedback in allowing nodule identification under two experimental conditions of real-time telepresence: In Line of Sight (ILS), where the platform was placed in the visible range of a user; and the more demanding Not In Line of Sight (NILS), with the platform and the user being 50 km apart. We found that the entailed percentage of identification was higher for stiffer inclusions with respect to the softer ones (average of 74% within the duration of the task), in both telepresence conditions evaluated. These promising results call for further exploration of tactile augmentation technology for telepresence in medical interventions.
Highlights
Based on the user’s gestures, the platform was able to follow square geometries as well as circular trajectories
The final evaluation of the perception, found by fitting the response datasets into the cumulative distribution function (CDF), This paper assesses the usability of the developed tactile system in tele‐palpation to localize demonstrated that the user could distinguish an inclusion with stiffness higher than a = 2.5 N·mm−1 various stiffer polymeric nodules in the surrounding soft matrix during active exploration
More controlled environment, the sensing platform was placed near the user (In Line of Sight—ILS), The promising results demonstrate the ease and successful augmentation for navigation in a soft while afterwards, the platform was moved to a remote location (Not In Line of Sight—NILS)
Summary
The impact of haptic devices has grown tremendously over the last decade [1,2,3] These devices connect the user to a virtual object, providing tactile feedback directly to the human skin. The present study addresses this challenge with specific reference to potential applications in medical robotics, by proposing a markerless gesture-based controller of a mechatronic platform with tactile sensory feedback delivered to a user seeking remote buried nodules. This task is selected as a benchmarking reference of the developed system because palpation is a very important practice in medical diagnosis and surgical intervention
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