A Proposal of Haptic Technology to be Used in Medical Simulation

Abstract

For medical training aims, tele-operation systems have inspired virtual reality systems. Since force sensors placed on the robotic arms provide interaction force information that is transmitted to the human operator, such force produces a tactile sensation that allows feeling some remote or virtual environment properties. However, in the last two decades, researchers have focused on visually simulating the virtual environments present in a surgical environment. This implies that methods that cannot reproduce some characteristics of virtual surfaces, such as the case of penetrable objects, generate the force response. To solve this problem, we study a virtual reality system with haptic feedback using a tele-operation approach. By defining the operator-manipulated interface as the master robot and the virtual environment as the slave robot, we have, by addressing the virtual environment as a restricted motion problem, the force response. Therefore, we implement a control algorithm, based on a tele-operation system, to feedback the corresponding force to the operator. We achieve this through the design of a virtual environment using the dynamic model of the robot in contact with holonomic and non-holonomic constraints. In addition, according to the medical training simulator, before contact, there is always a free movement stage.