Development of Haptic Approaches for a Head-Controlled Soft Robotic Endoscope

Recent advances in soft robotics are utilized to solve challenges in endoscopy, such as maneuverability, flexibility, and the structural stiffness required to deliver enough force during endoscopic surgical procedure. Other major challenge is the lack of haptic feedback from the tool end-effector to the surgeon. Current clinical practice in minimally invasive intervention requires an assistant to control the camera since the surgeon is preoccupied with task at hand, creating a indirect control procedure for maneuvering the endoscope. For the soft robotic endoscope, we implemented a haptic feedback interface along with a novel control method to concurrently tackle these challenges. The user of the developed system can visualise the planned 2D insertion path and steer the endoscope module accordingly using an inertial measurement unit mounted on a head-band. Furthermore, five different haptic feedback methods (three kinesthetic and two vibrotactile) were compared in term of user accuracy while steering the endoscope along a planned path. The results show that the user's accuracy using kinesthetic and vibrotactile feedback were comparable, however, participants of this study find vibrotactile feedback approach more preferable for its intuitiveness and comfort.