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

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

Design of a Haptic Interface for Medical Applications using Magneto-Rheological Fluid based Actuators

This thesis reports on the design, construction, and evaluation of a prototype two degrees-of-freedom (DOF) haptic interface, which takes advantage of Magneto-Rheological Fluid (MRF) based clutches for actuation. Haptic information provides important cues in teleoperated systems and enables the user to feel the interaction with a remote or virtual environment during teleoperation. The two main objectives in designing a haptic interface are stability and transparency. Indeed, deficiencies in these factors in haptics-enabled telerobotic systems has the introduction of haptics in medical environments where safety and reliability are prime considerations. An actuator with poor dynamics, high inertia, large size, and heavy weight can significantly undermine the stability and transparency of a teleoperated system. In this work, the potential benefits of MRF-based actuators to the field of haptics in medical applications are studied. Devices developed with such fluids are known to possess superior mechanical characteristics over conventional servo systems. These characteristics significantly contribute to improved stability and transparency of haptic devices. This idea is evaluated and verified through both theoretical and experimental points of view. The design of a small-scale MRF-based clutch, suitable for a multi-DOF haptic interface, is discussed and its performance is compared with conventional servo systems. This design is developed into four prototype clutches. In addition, a closed-loop torque control strategy is presented. The feedback signal used in this control scheme comes from the magnetic field acquired from embedded Hall sensors in the clutch. The controller uses this feedback signal to compensate for the nonlinear behavior using an estimated model, based on Artificial Neural Networks. Such a control strategy eliminates the need for torque sensors for providing feedback signals. The performance of the developed design and the effectiveness of the proposed modeling and control techniques are experimentally validated. Next, a 2-DOF haptic interface based on a distributed antagonistic configuration of MRF-based clutches is constructed for a class of medical applications. This device is incorporated in a master-slave teleoperation setup that is used for applications involving needle insertion and soft-tissue palpation. Phantom and in vitro animal tissue were used to assess the performance of the haptic interface. The results show a great potential of MRF-based actuators for integration in haptic devices for medical interventions that require reliable, safe, accurate, highly transparent, and stable force reflection

Design of a novel passive Binary-Controlled Variable Stiffness Joint (BpVSJ) towards passive haptic interface application

In this paper we present the design, development and experimental validation of a novel Binary-Controlled Variable Stiffness Joint (BpVSJ) towards haptic teleoperation and human interaction manipulators applications. The proposed actuator is a proof of concept of a passive revolute joint, where the working principle is based on the recruitment of series-parallel elastic elements. The novelty of the system lies in its design topology, including the capability to involve an (n) number of series-parallel elastic elements to achieve (2n) levels of stiffness, as compared to current approaches. Accordingly, the level of stiffness can be altered at any position without the need to revert to the initial equilibrium position. The BpVSJ has low energy consumption and short switching time, and is able to rotate freely at zero stiffness without limitations. Further smart features include scalability and relative compactness. This paper details the mathematical stiffness modeling of the proposed actuator mechanism, as well as the experimentally measured performance characteristics. The experimental results matched well with the physical-based modeling in terms of stiffness variation levels. Moreover, Psychophysical experiments were also conducted using (20) healthy subjects in order to evaluate the capability of the BpVSJ to display three different levels of stiffness that are cognitively realized by the users. The participants performed two tasks: a relative cognitive task and an absolute cognitive task. The results show that the BpVSJ is capable of rendering stiffness with high average relative accuracy (Relative Cognitive Task relative accuracy is 97.3%, and Absolute Cognitive Task relative accuracy is 83%)

Medical robots for MRI guided diagnosis and therapy

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) provides the capability of imaging tissue with fine resolution and superior soft tissue contrast, when compared with conventional ultrasound and CT imaging, which makes it an important tool for clinicians to perform more accurate diagnosis and image guided therapy. Medical robotic devices combining the high resolution anatomical images with real-time navigation, are ideal for precise and repeatable interventions. Despite these advantages, the MR environment imposes constraints on mechatronic devices operating within it. This thesis presents a study on the design and development of robotic systems for particular MR interventions, in which the issue of testing the MR compatibility of mechatronic components, actuation control, kinematics and workspace analysis, and mechanical and electrical design of the robot have been investigated. Two types of robotic systems have therefore been developed and evaluated along the above aspects. (i) A device for MR guided transrectal prostate biopsy: The system was designed from components which are proven to be MR compatible, actuated by pneumatic motors and ultrasonic motors, and tracked by optical position sensors and ducial markers. Clinical trials have been performed with the device on three patients, and the results reported have demonstrated its capability to perform needle positioning under MR guidance, with a procedure time of around 40mins and with no compromised image quality, which achieved our system speci cations. (ii) Limb positioning devices to facilitate the magic angle effect for diagnosis of tendinous injuries: Two systems were designed particularly for lower and upper limb positioning, which are actuated and tracked by the similar methods as the first device. A group of volunteers were recruited to conduct tests to verify the functionality of the systems. The results demonstrate the clear enhancement of the image quality with an increase in signal intensity up to 24 times in the tendon tissue caused by the magic angle effect, showing the feasibility of the proposed devices to be applied in clinical diagnosis

A Cost-Effective Haptic Device for Assistive and Rehabilitation Purposes

With the growing population of elderly, the need for assistance has also increased considerably especially for the tasks such as cleaning, reaching and grasping objects among others. There are numerous assistive devices in the market for this group of people. However, they are either too expensive or require overwhelming user effort for manipulation. Therefore, the presented research is primarily concerned with developing a low-cost, easy to use assistive device for elderly to reach and grasp objects through intuitive interface for the control of a slave anthropomorphic robotic arm (tele operator). The system also implements haptic feedback technology that enables the user to maneuver the grasping task in a realistic manner. A bilateral master-slave robotic system combined with the haptic feedback technology has been designed, built and tested to determine the suitability of this device for the chosen application. The final prototype consists of primarily off the shelf components programmed in such a way as to provide accurate teleoperation and haptic feedback to the user. While the nature of the project as a prototype precluded any patient trials, testing of the final system has shown that a fairly low cost device can be capable of providing the user an ability to remotely control a robotic arm for reaching and grasping objects with accurate force feedback

Teleoperation of MRI-Compatible Robots with Hybrid Actuation and Haptic Feedback

Image guided surgery (IGS), which has been developing fast recently, benefits significantly from the superior accuracy of robots and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which is a great soft tissue imaging modality. Teleoperation is especially desired in the MRI because of the highly constrained space inside the closed-bore MRI and the lack of haptic feedback with the fully autonomous robotic systems. It also very well maintains the human in the loop that significantly enhances safety. This dissertation describes the development of teleoperation approaches and implementation on an example system for MRI with details of different key components. The dissertation firstly describes the general teleoperation architecture with modular software and hardware components. The MRI-compatible robot controller, driving technology as well as the robot navigation and control software are introduced. As a crucial step to determine the robot location inside the MRI, two methods of registration and tracking are discussed. The first method utilizes the existing Z shaped fiducial frame design but with a newly developed multi-image registration method which has higher accuracy with a smaller fiducial frame. The second method is a new fiducial design with a cylindrical shaped frame which is especially suitable for registration and tracking for needles. Alongside, a single-image based algorithm is developed to not only reach higher accuracy but also run faster. In addition, performance enhanced fiducial frame is also studied by integrating self-resonant coils. A surgical master-slave teleoperation system for the application of percutaneous interventional procedures under continuous MRI guidance is presented. The slave robot is a piezoelectric-actuated needle insertion robot with fiber optic force sensor integrated. The master robot is a pneumatic-driven haptic device which not only controls the position of the slave robot, but also renders the force associated with needle placement interventions to the surgeon. Both of master and slave robots mechanical design, kinematics, force sensing and feedback technologies are discussed. Force and position tracking results of the master-slave robot are demonstrated to validate the tracking performance of the integrated system. MRI compatibility is evaluated extensively. Teleoperated needle steering is also demonstrated under live MR imaging. A control system of a clinical grade MRI-compatible parallel 4-DOF surgical manipulator for minimally invasive in-bore prostate percutaneous interventions through the patient’s perineum is discussed in the end. The proposed manipulator takes advantage of four sliders actuated by piezoelectric motors and incremental rotary encoders, which are compatible with the MRI environment. Two generations of optical limit switches are designed to provide better safety features for real clinical use. The performance of both generations of the limit switch is tested. MRI guided accuracy and MRI-compatibility of whole robotic system is also evaluated. Two clinical prostate biopsy cases have been conducted with this assistive robot

Magnetorheological Fluid Based Devices Reported in 2013–2018: Mini-Review and Comment on Structural Configurations

This paper presents a mini-review of magnetorheological (MRF) fluid-based devices (MRF devices in short) including the brake, clutch, damper, and the mount reported from 2013 to 2018. MRF devices are usually designed based on three operating modes of MRF: flow mode, shear mode and squeeze mode. Each mode has its own characteristics for the high performance of application systems. Therefore, numerous design configurations of MRF devices have been proposed by many researchers. In this article, among many different MRF devices such as MRF brake, clutch, damper and MRF mount proposed over the last 6 years are examined in the sense of their structural configuration and operating principles. Certain advantages and demerits of each MRF device are also discussed. In addition, some useful design guidelines of MRF devices, which are absolutely different from developed MRF devices so far, are provided to enhance design simplicity and control performance

Wearable Systems for the Hand with High Functionality and Usability for Virtual Reality

Department of Mechanical EngineeringAs an advanced physical human-robot interaction (pHRI), there has been a surge of interest in a haptic device for virtual reality (VR) field. Especially, wearable force feedback devices which can measure the human???s motion and apply the feeling of the object have been actively investigated. It is ideal to measure all motions of the user, and apply the feelings to all body parts, but it requires many sensors and actuators, resulting that bulky and heavy system. Therefore, the wearable system, which focuses on some body parts which are essential for interacting with virtual environments, should be developed by considering the number of sensors and actuators practically. When it comes to the body parts, the hand is important to grasp and manipulate the object, and interact with external environments. In terms of realizing the feeling of the object, the kinesthetic (force feedback) information mainly affect to distinguish the geometry of the object and manipulate the object, rather than tactile information such as pressure, shear, temperature, etc. Consequently, the wearable force feedback systems for the hand have been actively investigated. For realizing the feeling of the object, various stiffness should be generated by the force feedback system. Since the stiffness is the force change along the position change, two main functions of finger motion measurement and force feedback are required. Those functions can be summarized as functionality. Other subjective factors can be summarized as usability. The usability is the ease of use and usefulness, including quantifiable characteristics, such as user task performances, subjective satisfaction, learnability and user; in this study, it was interpreted as design, wearability, ease of use, etc. However, there are few wearable systems for the hand to utilize the applications for virtual reality. The main reason is that the hand has relatively many degrees of freedom (DOFs) and range of motion (ROM), and generate large force compared to its small size; the wearable systems which could measure the finger motion accurately and apply the precise force were large and heavy because many actuators and sensors were required. In other words, the wearable systems that satisfied high functionality were poor in usability. For high usability, many devices by small motors have been developed, but the corresponding functionality were deteriorated. Designing the system that satisfies both functionality and usability seems to be a trade-off problem, but the wearable system for virtual reality can be applied to the real world only when both elements are satisfied. Therefore, the main goal of this dissertation is to develop a system of both high functionality and usability in order to apply to the actual virtual reality field. Especially, this study aims to enhance the usability by proposing new methods for wearability, ease of use, and by using a small motor to reduce the system weight, but maintain the functionality through various mechanical approaches such as cable and linkage driven mechanisms. First, finger motion measurement systems have been investigated because accurate measurement of the finger motion itself has been challenged due to its many degrees of freedom (DOFs) and range of motion (ROM) based on complex anatomical structures. A compact and glove-type system with potentiometers, springs and flexible wires was proposed to calculate the finger joint angle by length change of the cable. For high functionality and usability, the system which could measure three-dimensional finger motion for users of various hand sizes without a calibration process was developed. Second, the wearable force feedback systems, which achieve both finger motion measurement and force control, were developed. A dual-cable system was proposed to combine force feedback structures on the aforementioned finger motion measurement system with cables. A linkage mechanism based wearable system, called as WeHAPTIC (Wearable Haptic Interface of Accurate Position Tracking and Interactive force Control), were developed to overcome the limitations of the previous system. It was designed to directly connect fingertips and the system to allow various users, to easily worn by latchet based one click structure and to calibrate system with only one simple posture. Lastly, WeHAPTIC-Light was exploited to reduce the system weight by changing to small motors. The cable and linkage driven mechanisms were combined to measure the finger motion without any calibration process and permit fast finger motion. Lastly, extensive experiments were performed for performance verification of our system as the haptic device. Not only physical assessment of the system, but also psychophysical evaluation, which is a quantitative evaluation related to human perception ability, were conducted in this dissertation for comprehensive performance evaluation as the haptic interface.clos