Robotic suturing forces in the presence of haptic feedback and sensory substitution

There has been some interest in recent years on how information about interactions happening between surgical instruments and tissue during robot-assisted surgery could improve the efficiency and reliability of a surgical task. In this paper, it is hypothesized that various modes of sensory feedback have the potential to enhance performance in robot-assisted surgery in terms of the amount of applied forces. User performance during telemanipulated suturing is compared for cases where force feedback is replaced or complemented by visual representation of the force levels. In addition to confirming the above hypothesis, the results indicate a tradeoff between the magnitudes of applied forces and the time required to complete the task