Design of a six degree-of-freedom haptic hybrid platform manipultor

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Izmir, 2010Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 97-103)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxv, 115 leavesThe word Haptic, based on an ancient Greek word called haptios, means related with touch. As an area of robotics, haptics technology provides the sense of touch for robotic applications that involve interaction with human operator and the environment. The sense of touch accompanied with the visual feedback is enough to gather most of the information about a certain environment. It increases the precision of teleoperation and sensation levels of the virtual reality (VR) applications by exerting physical properties of the environment such as forces, motions, textures. Currently, haptic devices find use in many VR and teleoperation applications. The objective of this thesis is to design a novel Six Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) haptic desktop device with a new structure that has the potential to increase the precision in the haptics technology. First, previously developed haptic devices and manipulator structures are reviewed. Following this, the conceptual designs are formed and a hybrid structured haptic device is designed manufactured and tested. Developed haptic device.s control algorithm and VR application is developed in Matlab© Simulink. Integration of the mechanism with mechanical, electromechanical and electronic components and the initial tests of the system are executed and the results are presented. According to the results, performance of the developed device is discussed and future works are addressed

Position / force control of systems subjected to communicaton delays and interruptions in bilateral teleoperation

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Izmir, 2012Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 65-68)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishix, 76 leavesTeleoperation technology allows to remotely operate robotic (slave) systems located in hazardous, risky and distant environments. The human operator sends commands through the controller (master) system to execute the tasks from a distance. The operator is provided with necessary (visual, audio or haptic) feedback to accomplish the mission remotely. In bilateral teleoperation, continuous feedback from the remote environment is generated. Thus, the operator can handle the task as if the operator is in the remote environment relying on the relevant feedback. Since teleoperation deals with systems controlled from a distance, time delays and package losses in transmission of information are present. These communication failures affect the human perception and system stability, and thus, the ability of operator to handle the task successfully. The objective of this thesis is to investigate and develop a control algorithm, which utilizes model mediated teleoperation integrating parallel position/force controllers, to compensate for the instability issues and excessive forcing applied to the environment arising from communication failures. Model mediation technique is extended for three-degrees-of-freedom teleoperation and a parallel position/force controller, impedance controller, is integrated in the control algorithm. The proposed control method is experimentally tested by using Matlab Simulink blocksets for real-time experimentation in which haptic desktop devices, Novint Falcon and Phantom Desktop are configured as master and slave subsystems of the bilateral teleoperation. The results of these tests indicate that the stability and passivity of proposed bilateral teleoperation systems are preserved during constant and variable time delays and data losses while the position and force tracking test results provide acceptable performance with bounded errors

Integration of the hybrid-structure haptic interface: HIPHAD v1.0

Design, manufacturing, integration and initial test results of the 6-DoF haptic interface, HIPHAD v1.0, are presented in this paper. The hybrid haptic robot mechanism is composed of a 3-DoF parallel platform manipulator, R-Cube, for translational motions and a 3-DoF serial wrist mechanism for monitoring the rotational motions of the handle. The device is capable of displaying point-type of contact since only the R-Cube mechanism is actuated. The dimensions and the orientation of the R-Cube mechanism are reconfigured to comply with the requirements of the haptic system design criteria. The system has several advantages such as relatively trivial kinematical analysis, compactness and high stiffness. The integration of the system along with its mechanism, data acquisition card (DAQ), motor drivers, motors, position sensors, and computer control interface are outlined.Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant within the 7th European Community Framework Programm

Prevalence of haptic feedback in robot-mediated surgery : a systematic review of literature

© 2017 Springer-Verlag. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Robotic Surgery. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11701-017-0763-4With the successful uptake and inclusion of robotic systems in minimally invasive surgery and with the increasing application of robotic surgery (RS) in numerous surgical specialities worldwide, there is now a need to develop and enhance the technology further. One such improvement is the implementation and amalgamation of haptic feedback technology into RS which will permit the operating surgeon on the console to receive haptic information on the type of tissue being operated on. The main advantage of using this is to allow the operating surgeon to feel and control the amount of force applied to different tissues during surgery thus minimising the risk of tissue damage due to both the direct and indirect effects of excessive tissue force or tension being applied during RS. We performed a two-rater systematic review to identify the latest developments and potential avenues of improving technology in the application and implementation of haptic feedback technology to the operating surgeon on the console during RS. This review provides a summary of technological enhancements in RS, considering different stages of work, from proof of concept to cadaver tissue testing, surgery in animals, and finally real implementation in surgical practice. We identify that at the time of this review, while there is a unanimous agreement regarding need for haptic and tactile feedback, there are no solutions or products available that address this need. There is a scope and need for new developments in haptic augmentation for robot-mediated surgery with the aim of improving patient care and robotic surgical technology further.Peer reviewe

Haptic interfaces: Hardware, software and human performance

Virtual environments are computer-generated synthetic environments with which a human user can interact to perform a wide variety of perceptual and motor tasks. At present, most of the virtual environment systems engage only the visual and auditory senses, and not the haptic sensorimotor system that conveys the sense of touch and feel of objects in the environment. Computer keyboards, mice, and trackballs constitute relatively simple haptic interfaces. Gloves and exoskeletons that track hand postures have more interaction capabilities and are available in the market. Although desktop and wearable force-reflecting devices have been built and implemented in research laboratories, the current capabilities of such devices are quite limited. To realize the full promise of virtual environments and teleoperation of remote systems, further developments of haptic interfaces are critical. In this paper, the status and research needs in human haptics, technology development and interactions between the two are described. In particular, the excellent performance characteristics of Phantom, a haptic interface recently developed at MIT, are highlighted. Realistic sensations of single point of contact interactions with objects of variable geometry (e.g., smooth, textured, polyhedral) and material properties (e.g., friction, impedance) in the context of a variety of tasks (e.g., needle biopsy, switch panels) achieved through this device are described and the associated issues in haptic rendering are discussed

Haptic Zoom: An Interaction Model for Desktop Haptic Devices with Limited Workspace

[EN] Haptic devices can be used to feel through the sense of touch what the user is watching in a virtual scene. Force feedback devices provide kinesthetic information enabling the user to touch virtual objects. However, the most reasonably priced devices of this type are the desktop ones, which have a limited workspace that does not allow a natural and convenient interaction with virtual scenes due to the difference in size between them and the workspace. In this paper, a brand-new interaction model addressing this problem is proposed. It is called Haptic Zoom and it is based on performing visual and haptic amplifications of regions of interest. These amplifications allow the user to decide whether s/he wants more freedom in movements or an accurate interaction with a specific element inside the scene. An evaluation has been carried out comparing this technique and two well-known desktop haptic device techniques. Preliminary results showed that haptic zoom can be more useful than other techniques at accuracy tasks.SIA. G. acknowledges a FPU fellowship provided by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte of Spain

Design and performance evaluation of a prototype MRF-based haptic interface for medical applications

This paper describes the construction and stability and transparency evaluation of a prototype two degrees-of-freedom (DoF) haptic interface, which takes ad-vantage of magneto-rheological fluid (MRF)-based clutches for actuation. These small-scale clutches were designed in our lab, and their evaluation were reported previously [1],[2]. MRF-based actuators exhibit superior characteristics,which can significantly contribute to transparency and stability of haptic devices. Based on these actuators, a distributed antagonistic configuration is used to develop the2-DoF haptic interface. This device is incorporated in a master–slave teleoperation setup intended for medical per-cutaneous interventions and soft-tissue palpation. Preliminary studies on the stability and transparency of the haptic interface in this setup using phantom and ex vivo samples show the great potential of MRF-based actuators for integr-tion in haptic devices that require reliable, safe, accurate,highly transparent, and stable force reflection

Towards a Twisted String Actuated Haptic Device: Experimental Testing of a 2-D Virtual Environment and Teleoperation Interface

In the article, a first stage implementation of a haptic device towards a complete 3-D workspace twisted-string actuated haptic interface is discussed. In the present work, a 2-D setup is presented, with the aim of preliminarly testing the behaviour of this novel haptic system, especially with respect to the adopted cable-based actuation solution. In particular, the component descriptions, kinematics of the planar device and the controller for teleoperation purposes are illustrated. Results regarding the behaviour of the system in rendering a virtual environment and in a robot teleoperation scenario with haptic force feedback are reported. The experimental outcomes show that the designed and implemented system is suitable for teleoperation with haptic interfaces, providing positive perspectives for the realization of the fully functional 3-D haptic interface in the future work