Specification and design of a new haptic interface for maxillo facial surgery

Multimodal VR training platforms appear as a very promising complement to traditional learning methods for the transfer of skills. The environment is fully controlled and the content of the application, as well as the feedbacks, can be tuned to the performances and progress of the user. The efficiency of this approach depends however on the ability to realistically reproduce the situations encountered in the real world. If not, users could develop false perception-action loops or illusionary conjunctions. This would be detrimental for the transfer of the training to the real world. Our institute, the Lab of applied research on Software-Intensive Technologies from the French Atomic Energy Commission, CEA, LIST, is currently developing such a platform for the training of maxillo facial surgery. As no existing haptic device fits the requirements of this application, we specifically developed a new interface. This paper presents its specification, design and performances.