The robotic system includes a force box used for measuring the tactile force that interventionalists exerted with their fingers. This force is regarded as the interventionalists’ operative force on the guidewire or catheter in regular surgery. The force box includes a 32-prism, tiny flexible strip sensors, PCBs, and batteries. A flexible sensor is folded and wound around the force box surface, and its data is logged as a 32-channel data multiplexed over an Analog Multiplexer (Texas Instruments). Thus, the interventionalists also operate the master device by manipulating the flexible sensor with their finger. The force data is processed in a microcontroller STM32 and transmitted over a Bluetooth module to the slave console in real time. The force box also reflects information about the flexible tool’s firmness as it is held with a clamping mechanism in the slave manipulator. The guidewire is clamped tightly when the surgeon presses hard on the force box and vice versa.
To study the usage of robotic-assisted vascular interventions by surgeons and aid them in acquiring skills more efficiently, I designed a smart glove. This glove is capable of capturing and fusing information from multiple modalities, including the bending of the surgeon’s fingers, the forces exerted while manipulating the vascular surgical robot, electromyographic (EMG) signals, posture angles and accelerations (IMU), as well as spatial position and orientation collected using electromagnetic sensors.
Related Pubulications:
Paper: Chen, Xing-Yu, et al. Design and Evaluation of a Learning-based Vascular Interventional Surgery Robot. Fibers, 10.12 (2022): 106
CN Patent: A Tactile-Feedback Device and Method for Surgical Robots. CN115137483A
CN Patent: A Bidirectional Guidewire Force Measurement Method for Vascular Interventional Surgical Robot. CN114948258A