Prototyping and Initial Feasibility Study of Palpation Display Apparatus Using Granular Jamming

Abstract

We designed a novel tactile display apparatus in order to facilitate medical palpation and early diagnosis of a possibly cancerous tumor for the advancement of early diagnostic procedure and to overcome the limitations of existing bulky systems. This paper introduces our first 3D printed soft prototype nodule. It encloses granular particles to physically simulate a lump under varying stiffness control. To support the design, we performed initial feasibility tests. A force versus displacement graph was plotted to understand the behavior of the nodule. It is observed that, under vacuum pressure, the particles are jammed together resulting in much higher stiffness of the nodule compared to the normal condition where particles inside are not jammed together leading to lesser stiffness.