A Transparent Teleoperated Robotic Surgical System with Predictive Haptic Feedback and Force Modelling

In recent years, robotic minimally invasive surgery has transformed many types of surgical procedures and improved their outcomes. Implementing effective haptic feedback into a teleoperated robotic surgical system presents a significant challenge due to the trade-off between transparency and stability caused by system communication time delays. In this paper, these time delays are mitigated by implementing an environment estimation and force prediction methodology into an experimental robotic minimally invasive surgical system. At the slave, an exponentially weighted recursive least squares (EWRLS) algorithm estimates the respective parameters of the Kelvin–Voigt (KV) and Hunt–Crossley (HC) force models. The master then provides force feedback by interacting with a virtual environment via the estimated parameters. Palpation experiments were conducted with the slave in contact with polyurethane foam during human-in-the-loop teleoperation. The experimental results indicated that the prediction RMSE of error between predicted master force feedback and measured slave force was reduced to 0.076 N for the Hunt–Crossley virtual environment, compared to 0.356 N for the Kelvin–Voigt virtual environment and 0.560 N for the direct force feedback methodology. The results also demonstrated that the HC force model is well suited to provide accurate haptic feedback, particularly when there is a delay between the master and slave kinematics. Furthermore, a haptic feedback approach that incorporates environment estimation and force prediction improve transparency during teleoperation. In conclusion, the proposed bilateral master–slave robotic system has the potential to provide transparent and stable haptic feedback to the surgeon in surgical robotics procedures.