A control scheme for 5 d.o.f. haptic feedback guided teleoperation

This paper deals with the problem of guiding an operator during the execution of a 5 d.o.f. teleoperation task. This work comes from the RIME research project, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR). The project is focused on the feasibility of a spine surgery telerobotic system, made up of a haptic master, a slave robot, an optical tracking system and a main control unit. In this system, the surgeon is guided through a drilling operation by means of haptic feedback: as soon as the vertebra moves, the tracking device measures vertebra pose and a proper force is exerted on the operator’s hand; moreover, the haptic master produces the force feedback related to the teleoperation. In this paper, the control scheme and some experimental tests are presented. In these first tests, vertebra movements are simulated by means of a SCARA robot, measured by the tracking system and displayed to the operator by means of a custom-built 5 d.o.f. haptic display, while no slave robot is used.