Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Glennan Building 514A, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 May 31;23(11):5230. doi: 10.3390/s23115230.
Effective force modulation during tissue manipulation is important for ensuring safe, robot-assisted, minimally invasive surgery (RMIS). Strict requirements for in vivo applications have led to prior sensor designs that trade off ease of manufacture and integration against force measurement accuracy along the tool axis. Due to this trade-off, there are no commercial, off-the-shelf, 3-degrees-of-freedom (3DoF) force sensors for RMIS available to researchers. This makes it challenging to develop new approaches to indirect sensing and haptic feedback for bimanual telesurgical manipulation. We present a modular 3DoF force sensor that integrates easily with an existing RMIS tool. We achieve this by relaxing biocompatibility and sterilizability requirements and by using commercial load cells and common electromechanical fabrication techniques. The sensor has a range of ±5 N axially and ±3 N laterally with errors of below 0.15 N and maximum errors below 11% of the sensing range in all directions. During telemanipulation, a pair of jaw-mounted sensors achieved average errors below 0.15 N in all directions. It achieved an average grip force error of 0.156 N. The sensor is for bimanual haptic feedback and robotic force control in delicate tissue telemanipulation. As an open-source design, the sensors can be adapted to suit other non-RMIS robotic applications.
在组织操作过程中进行有效的力调制对于确保安全、机器人辅助的微创手术（RMIS）至关重要。由于对体内应用的严格要求，导致之前的传感器设计在制造和集成方面很容易妥协，而在工具轴上的力测量精度则受到影响。由于这种权衡，目前还没有用于 RMIS 的商用、现成的、三自由度（3DoF）力传感器可供研究人员使用。这使得开发用于双手遥操作的间接感应和触觉反馈的新方法变得具有挑战性。我们提出了一种模块化的 3DoF 力传感器，它可以与现有的 RMIS 工具轻松集成。我们通过放宽生物相容性和可灭菌性要求，并使用商用负载单元和常见的机电制造技术来实现这一点。该传感器在轴向有 ±5 N 的范围和 ±3 N 的侧向范围，误差低于 0.15 N，在所有方向上的最大误差低于传感范围的 11%。在遥操作期间，一对安装在钳口上的传感器在所有方向上的平均误差均低于 0.15 N。它的平均夹持力误差为 0.156 N。该传感器适用于在精细组织遥操作中进行双手触觉反馈和机器人力控制。作为一个开源设计，该传感器可以进行适配，以满足其他非 RMIS 机器人应用的需求。
