Design and evaluation of a haptic interface for interactive simulation of minimally-invasive surgeries

This paper deals with the design and control of a haptic device to be used in a minimally invasive surgery simulator. Replicating haptic cues is of special interest since it is used in gesture motor control and important decision-making scenarios such as the discrimination of healthy versus abnormal tissues, identification of organs, etc. The structure of this new device is based on real motions of the tool during practical use in real procedures. The device is designed to provide high force and torque capability. For a better touch feedback part of the surgical tool is kept to be the grasper (i.e. the handle) of the haptic interface. The motorized part provides force-feedback and consists of a hybrid configuration (parallel-serial) which allows combining a relatively high stiffness and large workspace. The design and dimensioning procedure of the actuators and the workspace are performed using a database of measurement recorded during in-vivo minimally invasive surgeries. The kinematics -forward and inverse- model is formulated explicitly by using analytical methods. The resulted device is evaluated experimentally and compared with some commercially available devices.