A Novel Pneumatic Force Sensor for Robot-Assisted Surgery

This paper presents a pneumatic-based force sensor, used to measure the force generated at the tip of a surgical instrument during robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS). Despite the achievements of the robotic surgery, the lack of haptic feedback to the surgeon is still a great limitation, since through palpation the physician can distinguish consistency of tissues and determine the occurrence of an abnormal mass. Although a great effort has been made by researchers to develop novel haptic interfaces able to provide force feedback to the operator, far fewer works exist regarding the design of sensing systems for robotic surgery. In this respect, we propose a new force measurement method based on the relation between the air pressure variation inside a pneumatic balloon and the interaction force due to the contact between the balloon and an object. A performance comparison with a very-fine resolution commercial force sensor proves the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.