Haptics in Teleoperated Medical Interventions: Force Measurement, Haptic Interfaces and Their Influence on User's Performance

OBJECTIVES: Haptics in teleoperated medical interventions enables measurement and transfer of force information to the operator during robot-environment interaction. This paper provides an overview of the current research in this domain and guidelines for future investigations. METHODS: We review current technologies in force measurement and haptic devices as well as their experimental evaluation and influence on user's performance. RESULTS: Force sensing is moving away from the conventional proximal measurement methods to distal sensing and contact-less methods. Wearable devices that deliver haptic feedback on different body parts are increasingly playing an important role. Performance and accuracy improvement are the widely reported benefits of haptic feedback, while there is a debate on its effect on task completion time and exerted force. CONCLUSION: With the surge of new ideas, there is a need for better and more systematic validation of the new sensing and feedback technology, through better user studies and novel methods like validated benchmarks and new taxonomies. SIGNIFICANCE: This review investigates haptics from sensing to interfaces within the context of user's performance and the validation procedures to highlight salient advances. It provides guidelines to future developments and highlights the shortcomings in the field.