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A new haptic glove can give clumsy surgeons firm hands by simply sending them a friendly electric shock.
The system is designed for robotic arms, which act as physical extensions of a human surgeon. These tools add precision and scope to operations, but cannot prevent accidents when the human controller slips.
In traditional operations, a surgeon looks at your hands as they operate. But when they control a robot, they have to follow the procedure on a monitor, which displays images from cameras connected to the machine.
This indirect vision diminishes your sense of distance, making it difficult to judge the exact location of the robotic fingers. That could be a problem if they are operating on your brain.
[Read: This sweat-powered electronic skin can control your robotic limbs]
Fortunately for their patients, researchers at Texas A&M University have found a way to shake them in the right direction.
Electrical surgeons
The system sends small but noticeable buzzing sounds to the surgeon’s fingertips through a glove equipped with stimulation probes. The frequency of the current increases as the robotic fingers approach the delicate tissue and decreases as they move away.
The researchers recruited some brave volunteers to test it and compared their distance measurements with participants who relied solely on their eyes.
They found that users who received electrical impulses were three times better at estimating distance than those who used only visual information.
“When our technique is ready for use in surgical settings, clinicians will be able to intuitively know how far their robotic fingers are from the underlying structures, which means they can maintain their active focus on optimizing the surgical outcome of their patients,” he said. Hangue Park, assistant professor at Texas A&M.
That should reassure both patients on the operating table and the surgeons who treat them, as long as they are willing to receive an electric shock for their trade.
Posted on April 30, 2020 – 15:29 UTC
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