Haptic Control Design for Robotic-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery

This paper discusses the design of a control system for robotic-assisted surgery with haptic feedback. The operational space control has a position-position teleopearation architecture with the phantom in the loop, enabling telepresence in free-space and contact. The null space control guarantees that surgical kinematic constraints are fulfilled. Both task and posture control run active observers (AOBs) in Cartesian domain, taking into account force, velocity and position signals. Experiments with a D2M2 (direct drive medical manipulator) robot are presented