An Abdominal Phantom With Tunable Stiffness Nodules and Force Sensing Capability for Palpation Training

He, Liang; Herzig, Nicolas; Lusignan, Simon de; Scimeca, Luca; Maiolino, Perla; Iida, Fumiya; Nanayakkara, Thrishantha

doi:10.1109/tro.2020.3043717

Cited by 13 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…As palpation tasks seldom concerns irregularities in one plane, investigating multiple jamming layers, or simulating depth of palpation by dynamic stiffness control should be investigated. A positive backpressure in combination with ferrogranular jamming could yield 3D-shapes with high tactile resolution and geometrical freedom ( Koehler et al, 2020 ; He et al, 2021 ). In further work, we seek to test the concept with users who can provide feedback and evaluation on a medical basis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Granular jamming enables interfaces to alter stiffness and thus simulate compliant objects with variable hardness. This technology has been explored in medical training devices as embedded tactile modules ( He et al, 2021 ), multi-fingered palpation interfaces ( Li et al, 2014 ), and as actuation to enable objects and surfaces to alter shape and hardness for palpation ( Stanley et al, 2016 ; Koehler et al, 2020 ). While this technology looks promising, current solutions often require complex pneumatic systems, since a matrix of actuated cells or objects is needed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perception by Palpation: Development and Testing of a Haptic Ferrogranular Jamming Surface

et al. 2021

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Tactile hands-only training is particularly important for medical palpation. Generally, equipment for palpation training is expensive, static, or provides too few study cases to practice on. We have therefore developed a novel haptic surface concept for palpation training, using ferrogranular jamming. The concept’s design consists of a tactile field spanning 260 x 160 mm, and uses ferromagnetic granules to alter shape, position, and hardness of palpable irregularities. Granules are enclosed in a compliant vacuum-sealed chamber connected to a pneumatic system. A variety of geometric shapes (output) can be obtained by manipulating and arranging granules with permanent magnets. The tactile hardness of the palpable output can be controlled by adjusting the chamber’s vacuum level. A psychophysical experiment (N = 28) investigated how people interact with the palpable surface and evaluated the proposed concept. Untrained participants characterized irregularities with different position, form, and hardness through palpation, and their performance was evaluated. A baseline (no irregularity) was compared to three irregularity conditions: two circular shapes with different hardness (Hard Lump and Soft Lump), and an Annulus shape. 100% of participants correctly identified an irregularity in the three irregularity conditions, whereas 78.6% correctly identified baseline. Overall agreement between participants was high (κ= 0.723). The Intersection over Union (IoU) for participants sketched outline over the actual shape was IoU Mdn = 79.3% for Soft Lump, IoU Mdn = 68.8% for Annulus, and IoU Mdn = 76.7% for Hard Lump. The distance from actual to drawn center was Mdn = 6.4 mm (Soft Lump), Mdn = 5.3 mm (Annulus), and Mdn = 7.4 mm (Hard Lump), which are small distances compared to the size of the field. The participants subjectively evaluated Soft Lump to be significantly softer than Hard Lump and Annulus. Moreover, 71% of participants thought they improved their palpation skills throughout the experiment. Together, these results show that the concept can render irregularities with different position, form, and hardness, and that users are able to locate and characterize these through palpation. Participants experienced an improvement in palpation skills throughout the experiment, which indicates the concepts feasibility as a palpation training device.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception by Palpation: Development and Testing of a Haptic Ferrogranular Jamming Surface

et al. 2021

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“…Previous studies exploring pneumatic actuation within soft tactile sensors have applied this to reactive grasping ( McInroe et al, 2018 ), shape identification ( Huang et al, 2019 ; Xiang et al, 2019 ), estimating tissue elastic modulus ( Gubenko et al, 2017 ) and an explorative capsule capable of self-locomotion ( Hinitt et al, 2015 ). Variable effective stiffness tactile sensors have also been applied to emulate nodules inside phantom organs to assist with medical diagnosis training ( He et al, 2020b ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Optics-based tactile sensing is common across soft actuated sensors, as all electrical components can be physically separated from the tactile membrane ( Shimonomura, 2019 ). Among the pneumatically actuated tactile sensors referenced above, only He et al (2020a) and He et al (2020b) use pneumatic variations as the primary form of sensing; all other studies chose to implement optics-based tactile sensing. These studies have focused on detecting surface or bulk features of the stimulus that they are sensing, where heterogeneity in the depth of the stimulus remains under-exploited as a tactile cue.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical-Tactile Sensor for Lump Detection Using Pneumatic Control

2021

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Soft tactile sensors are an attractive solution when robotic systems must interact with delicate objects in unstructured and obscured environments, such as most medical robotics applications. The soft nature of such a system increases both comfort and safety, while the addition of simultaneous soft active actuation provides additional features and can also improve the sensing range. This paper presents the development of a compact soft tactile sensor which is able to measure the profile of objects and, through an integrated pneumatic system, actuate and change the effective stiffness of its tactile contact surface. We report experimental results which demonstrate the sensor’s ability to detect lumps on the surface of objects or embedded within a silicone matrix. These results show the potential of this approach as a versatile method of tactile sensing with potential application in medical diagnosis.

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“…Recent developments in the fields of robotic hardware, sensing, and machine learning have led to great progress in robotic applications in various areas [1], [2], [3]. Recent advances in Robotics have led to progress in various areas and naturally raised the demand for fully-autonomous, longlasting and self-evolving robots [4], keeping human efforts further out of the loop.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rearranging the Environment to Maximize Energy with a Robotic Circuit Drawing

Tan¹,

Liu²,

Rosendo³

2021

Preprint

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Robots with the ability to actively acquire power from surroundings will be greatly beneficial for long-term autonomy and to survive in uncertain environments. In this work, we present a robot capable of drawing circuits with conductive ink while also rearranging the visual world to receive maximum energy from a power source. A range of circuit drawing tasks is designed to simulate real-world scenarios, including avoiding physical obstacles and regions that would discontinue drawn circuits. We adopt the state-of-the-art Transporter networks for pick-and-place manipulation from visual observation. We conduct experiments in both simulation and real-world settings, and our results show that, with a small number of demonstrations, the robot learns to rearrange the placement of objects (removing obstacles and bridging areas unsuitable for drawing) and to connect a power source with a minimum amount of conductive ink. As autonomous robots become more present, in our houses and other planets, our proposed method brings a novel way for machines to keep themselves functional by rearranging their surroundings to create their own electric circuits.

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An Abdominal Phantom With Tunable Stiffness Nodules and Force Sensing Capability for Palpation Training

Abstract: and Nanayakkara, Thrishantha (2020) An abdominal phantom with tunable stiffness nodules and force sensing capability for palpation training. IEEE Transactions on Robotics. pp. 1-14.

Cited by 13 publications

References 41 publications

Perception by Palpation: Development and Testing of a Haptic Ferrogranular Jamming Surface

Perception by Palpation: Development and Testing of a Haptic Ferrogranular Jamming Surface

Optical-Tactile Sensor for Lump Detection Using Pneumatic Control

Rearranging the Environment to Maximize Energy with a Robotic Circuit Drawing

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