A Subject-Specific Four-Degree-of-Freedom Foot Interface to Control a Surgical Robot

Huang, Yanpei; Burdet, Etienne; Cao, Lin; Phan, Phuoc Thien; Tiong, Anthony Meng Huat; Phee, Soo Jay

doi:10.1109/tmech.2020.2964295

Cited by 35 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Results obtained with adaptive foot interfaces for robot control e.g. 60 , where data-driven approaches are used to create subject-specific motion mapping, are in line with our findings. Huang et al 60 report that inter-subject variability decreases once a subject-specific motion mapping is enabled.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…73 , where data-driven approaches are used to create subject-specific motion mapping, are in line with our findings. Huang et al 73 report that inter-subject variability decreases once a subject-specific motion mapping is enabled. This confirms the dependency of robot control performance on metrics inherent to each subject, which we present here to be a combination of motor coordination metrics relating to the task and the robotic interface.…”

Section: A B Pj Ft Fud T Ft Fud T Fud S Pt Plsupporting

confidence: 90%

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Playing the piano with a robotic third thumb: Assessing constraints of human augmentation

Shafti

Haar

Mio

et al. 2020

Preprint

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We wanted to study the ability of our brains and bodies to be augmented by supernumerary robot limbs, here extra fingers. We developed a mechanically highly functional supernumerary robotic 3 rd thumb actuator, the SR3T, and interfaced it with human users enabling them to play the piano with 11 fingers. We devised a set of measurement protocols and behavioural "biomarkers", the Human Augmentation Motor Coordination Assessment (HAMCA), which allowed us a priori to predict how well each individual human user could, after training, play the piano with a two-thumbs-hand. To evaluate augmented music playing ability we devised a simple musical score, as well as metrics for assessing the accuracy of playing the score. We evaluated the SR3T (supernumerary robotic 3 rd thumb) on 12 human subjects including 6 naïve and 6 experienced piano players. We demonstrated that humans can learn to play the piano with a 6-fingered hand within one hour of training. For each subject we could predict individually, based solely on their HAMCA performance before training, how well they were able to perform with the extra robotic thumb, after training (training end-point performance). Our work demonstrates the feasibility of robotic human augmentation with supernumerary robotic limbs within short time scales. We show how linking the neuroscience of motor learning with dexterous robotics and human-robot interfacing can be used to inform a priori how far individual motor impaired patients or healthy manual workers could benefit from robotic augmentation solutions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: A B Pj Ft Fud T Ft Fud T Fud S Pt Plsupporting

confidence: 90%

Playing the piano with a robotic third thumb: Assessing constraints of human augmentation

Shafti

Haar

Mio

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…However, because the lower limbs are usually used for walking, there are many studies on walking, but few studies on robotic manipulation with the legs. Several studies dealt with a robot manipulation using four DOFs of a lower limb: forward/backward and left/right foot movements and the dorsiflexion/plantarflexion and the valgus/varus of the ankle [18]- [19]. Komori et al studied robot operation by lower limb movement and experimentally showed that the lower limb is inferior to the upper limb for six-DOF operation in terms of time by approximately 79% and the subjective operability evaluation by approximately 39%, but the operability of the lower limb may be relatively close to that of the upper limb in terms of position operation [20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Effect of Motion Path on Leg Muscle Load and Evaluation of Device to Support Leg Motion During Robot Operation by Reducing Muscle Load

et al. 2021

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Because the human arm and leg have a similar skeletal structure, it may be possible to use the leg to operate a robot by the master-slave method. However, operation by the leg with six degrees of freedom has two problems. First, people move their ankle with a curved motion despite intending to move it linearly. Second, it is a burden for the operator to suspend their legs in the air during operation. This study dealt with these problems. For the first problem, we hypothesized that one of the reasons was that the muscle load of a curved motion was smaller than that of a linear motion, and we quantitatively compared them by musculoskeletal analysis. The muscle loads of curved motions were 20% smaller in the anteroposterior direction, 3.1% to 23.8% smaller in the lateral direction, and 10% smaller in the vertical direction than linear motions, which showed that the hypothesis was consistent. Further, comparison of the analysis results with the results of a previous study suggested that subjects unconsciously tried to reduce the muscle load and to move closer to a linear line when they moved their ankle while consciously intending to make a linear motion. For the second problem, we developed two different prototypes of a leg support device. An experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of these devices showed that subjective exercise intensity of the tasks in the experiment using the devices was 40% or more less than that without the device, which proved the effectiveness of the devices.

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“…The performance of the natural hands in both tri-manual and typical bi-manual operations is analysed to check the effect that the addition of SRLs has on the performance of the natural limbs in different task scenarios. The tri-manual operation system consists of two hand interfaces, one foot interface [142], and a virtual-reality testing environment. The hand interface is the Omega.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The system uses natural foot gestures controlling the flexible endoscope in four DoFs based on isomorphic mapping. The foot interface collects continuous foot gestures, providing foot support and positioning assistance while minimizing the operation fatigue [142].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of an intuitive foot-machine interface for robotic surgery

Huang¹

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In robotic surgery, the surgeon controls the surgical robot through human-machine interfaces. The most common interfaces are for hands so that the surgeon can only control at most two robotic instruments at one time while three or more instruments may be needed at the same time in some procedures, e.g., robotic endoscopic/laparoscopic surgery. Current practices to these cases, i.e., having one assistant control the additional instrument, is not ideal because fine collaboration between the surgeon and the assistant is required, and delayed actions and even safety issues due to communication errors may occur. These limitations can be avoided if the surgeon could control all the tools on his/her own simultaneously. This thesis work developed a novel foot-controlled human-machine interface, enabling the surgeon to control the additional robotic surgical tool using the foot, together with the two tools that are controlled by the hands. This foot-controlled interface controls a robotic surgical instrument in continuous direction and speed based on the motion of the foot in four degrees of freedom (DoFs), i.e., foot left/right translation, forward/backward translation, lateral/medial rotation, and toe-up/down rotation. The foot force/position signals are collected through eight feedback-sensing modules of the interface surrounding the foot. Each feedback-sensing module consists of a spring and a load cell. The foot's position can be determined by the deformation of the springs which is calculated based on the forces measured by the load cells. The whole foot operation is separated into elastic and isometric modes. In the elastic mode, the springs are not fully compressed and thus the foot can move freely with reaction forces from the springs (i.e., passive force feedback); in the isometric mode, the foot's motion is limited by the boundary (some springs are fully compressed) but its force is not limited and thus can still be used for output commands. The seamless transition between the two modes provides the user with rich proprioceptive information and meanwhile enlarges input ranges that are limited only by his/her strength. The interface also features a singularityfree workspace with a neutral central home position. The weight of the foot is well supported, and the friction of the interface is minimized to limit operation fatigue.i An analytical model based on the kinematics and statics of the foot interface was derived for output command calculation; however, this model does not consider the distinct motion behaviors of different users. Therefore, a data-driven mapping approach using independent component analysis was proposed to adapt the interface to the specific user's motion pattern, which effectively reduces the deviation between users.Three studies were conducted on the developed interface: (1) Controlling of an industrial robotic arm for path-tracking and button-pressing tasks and comparison to a foot button interface. The proposed interface was about 30% faster and 60% smoother than a conventional foot butto...

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A Subject-Specific Four-Degree-of-Freedom Foot Interface to Control a Surgical Robot

Cited by 35 publications

References 41 publications

Playing the piano with a robotic third thumb: Assessing constraints of human augmentation

Playing the piano with a robotic third thumb: Assessing constraints of human augmentation

Analysis of Effect of Motion Path on Leg Muscle Load and Evaluation of Device to Support Leg Motion During Robot Operation by Reducing Muscle Load

Development of an intuitive foot-machine interface for robotic surgery

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