Haptic feedback designs in teleoperation systems for minimal invasive surgery

One of the major shortcomings of state-of-the-art robotic systems for minimal invasive surgery is the lack of haptic feedback for the surgeon. In order to provide haptic information, sensors and actuators have to be added to the master and slave device. A control system should process the data and make a coupling between slave and master. Despite the significant amount of research on haptic devices, this control design problem is, largely, an open problem. This paper reports the results on three model-based control designs. Using the formalism of passivity, a robust controller has been designed, and is compared to a gain scheduled controller (LPV) which is adaptable for changes in the tissue characteristics.