Heartbeat synchronization with haptic feedback for telesurgical robot

Motion-canceling bilateral control, a teleoperation method, is proposed and implemented for telesurgical robots. Telesurgical robots have difficulty in achieving control owing to a lack of haptic feedback and the beating motion of organs. Hence, this study aims to provide a surgeon with the means for feeling the tactile sensation of the remote organ, as well as synchronizing with its motion. Therefore, a surgeon can treat the target using a master robot as if the organ is not moving even though it actually moves. The proposed method basically consists of acceleration-based bilateral control to achieve haptic feedback, and visual servoing is used to compensate for organ motion. The frequency characteristics and root locus of the proposed method are analyzed to evaluate its performance and stability, respectively. The proposal is validated through experiments using telesurgical forceps robots.