Sensors and devices to enhance the performances of a minimally invasive surgery tool for replicating surgeon's haptic perception of the manipulated tissues

Minimally invasive surgery is afflicted with important limits related to tactile uncoupling between the surgeon's hand and the tissues manipulated by the surgical tool. Our work suggests a solution for this problem. We designed a sensorization system in order to acquire information about the force exerted on the tissues and the deformation induced. We elaborated this information through an identification algorithm to extract typical material parameters. We applied a control law using the evaluated parameters for replicating the rheological dynamic behaviour of surgical tissues by means of a tactile display. In this paper, we describe the functioning of the sensor and the devices utilized, and our experimental results.