Development and experimental validation of a master interface with vibrotactile feedback for robotic telesurgery

This work wants to investigate the efficacy of a vibro-tactile feedback to convey a haptic perception to the surgeon in a teleoperated robotic system for surgery. To this purpose, vibrotactile actuators have been embedded in the end-effector of the master interface of a tele-operated robotic system made of the haptic joystick Novint Falcon and the Kuka Light Weight Robot III. Vibrotactile feedback can be used to support the surgeon during the surgical procedure, guiding him/her during the intervention, and to train unskilled surgeons with simulators. The development and the experimental validation of the master interface with the vibrotactile feedback is presented in this paper. The system has been validated on 12 subjects, who were requested to control the movement of a sphere along a desired path in a virtual environment. Results have been compared with the three cases of absence of feedback, visual feedback and combined vibrotactile and visual feedback. The obtained results demonstrate that a vibrotactile feedback can improve in a statistically significant manner the accuracy of the procedure with respect to the absence of feedback.