Design of bilateral control for force feedback in surgical robot

• DOI: 10.1007/s12555-013-0542-6
• Publication Date: 2015-08-07T00:46:08Z
• Authors: Sung Min Yoon; Won Jae Kim; Min Cheol Lee
• Keywords: Teleoperation; Reaction; Impedance Control; Observer (physics)

In robot assisted laparoscopic surgery using a commercialized robot, such as the da Vinci, surgeons have encountered problems, such as organ impairment, because they depend only on visual information. To solve these problems, a haptic system is required. Force feedback and a bilateral control system are essential for realizing a haptic teleoperation system. The use of a force/torque sensor for force feedback is difficult in a surgical robot instrument, but previous studies confirmed that the reaction force loaded on a surgical robot instrument can be estimated using a sliding perturbation observer (SPO)-based reaction force estimation method. This paper suggests a bilateral controller applying SPO based force estimation method to realize the possibility of a haptic function in a laparoscopic surgery robot system. In the suggested bilateral controller, the master control uses impedance control and the slave control uses a sliding mode control (SMC). A torque and force sensorless teleoperation system can be implemented using the suggested bilateral control structure through an experimental evaluation.