Preliminary design of a childbirth simulator haptic feedback

This paper discusses preliminary design of an interactive childbirth simulator with haptic feedback. This exploratory work started following a demand of the obstetrics and gynecology service of a Parisian hospital. Ideally, the final system should integrate cases-study database in order to provide a powerful teaching media by means of best of the virtual/augmented realities technology in terms of multimodal visualization and display. The difficulty of this new system lies in the haptic display function allowing to teach gesture interaction skill to obstetricians/midwifes students. This paper deals only on the feasibility of such a system. First, the system is presented and its "nominal ingredients" described in generic terms. Simple models of women pelvis, fetus and muscles have been considered. Pilot force feedback delivery is simulated and experienced; results are discussed.