Design and Performance Evaluation of MR Tactile Device for Medical Application

Abstract

It is very prevalent in medical industry to adopt robotic technology such as robotic minimally invasive surgery (RMIS). This causes the surgeon not to sense viscosity and stiffness of the tissue or organ. In order to generate the tactile recognition of human organ, this work proposes a novel tactile device using magnetorheological (MR) fluid. The MR fluid is fully inserted into diaphragm and several pins. Due to controllability of rheological properties by the intensity of the magnetic flux density, the operator can feel different force from the proposed tactile device. In order to evaluate the performance of tactile device, two method is proposed. One is to measure the repulsive force with applying several control inputs. The other method is to check the performance of tactile sensation using psychophysical experiments. From these results, the usability of the tactile device is proved.