A Flexible PDMS-Based Multimodal Pulse and Temperature Display

Surgical robotics is developing rapidly. It has numerous advantages for the patient such as small scars, shorter operation time, and shorter recovery time. While teleoperated robotics also has many benefits for the surgeon such as tremor reduction, force scaling, and comfortable working position, it completely isolates the surgeon hands, his/her natural force, and tactile sensors, from the patient, reducing the intuitiveness of the interface and sometimes leading to accidents. In an effort to restitute these sensations to the surgeon, various haptic displays have been designed rendering forces and tactile sensations at the level of the master device. We study multimodal haptic feedback and its effect on the intuitiveness of the teleoperated surgical interfaces. We present here the design and evaluation of a multimodal tactile display that reproduces pulse-like and thermal feedback on the user’s fingertip. In addition, the multimodal display is combined with a commercial force feedback device, and a virtual telepalpation task is implemented.