Development of High Dexterity Minimally Invasive Surgical System with Augmented Force Feedback Capability

For a laparoscopic surgery, master-slave type surgery assisting systems have been developed. It is expected that introducing force feedback for the master-slave system improves the operability. However, measurement of grasping or reacting force for the forceps is difficult, in particular, in case of a bending type forceps. Therefore, in the paper, a method to calculate the force applying on the tip of the forceps is proposed by measuring a force applying on the driving shafts of a link-type two directional bending forceps. Furthermore, a compensation method of influence of friction force is also described and measurement experiments of grasping and reacting force has been conducted to validate the proposed method. And force feedback is implemented to the master-slave system. Finally, the augmented display method of the force applied to forceps to an operator is proposed