Skin-deformation Guidance for

Surgical Training

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Training for robotic surgery is limited by the cost and logistics involved in running simulations on full robotic systems or expensive, bulky training systems. For early-stage training, these kinds of simulations could be run on a much cheaper, simpler system. This way, surgeons could benefit from more training time. I integrated an ungrounded surgical gripper with an inexpensive IR hand tracker and fingertip skin-stretch haptics. This system is simple and cheap. It could be provided to each surgical trainee along with simulation software to do extensive, early-stage training tasks. The haptic feedback can provide guidance cues throughout training to help trainees learn surgical motor skills more quickly. 

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Now, we are exploring more complex designs to provide better haptic guidance. We believe haptic guidance from a holdable device like this one could be beneficial in training tasks in VR, such as for surgery, assembly or other dexterous tasks in AR, in teleoperation of remote systems, and in navigation.