Development of a Novel Leader Device with Haptic Feedback for Vascular Interventional Surgery

Robot-assisted vascular interventional surgery has become a hot topic in the field of medical science and engineering. In recent years, the research of robot-assisted vascular interventional surgery has achieved promising results. However, improving the human-robot collaboration performance during the surgery is still a major challenge. To address this challenge, a novel leader device was designed and developed. In detail, the structural design of the leader device fully considers ergonomic design, which can greatly reduce the operating difficulty for surgeons while allowing them to take advantage of their traditional surgical experience. The leader device can recognize the surgeon’s operational behaviors, mainly including pushing, pulling, and rotating. Besides, haptic feedback function is realized and provided during the operation, which can help the surgeon accurately grasp the dynamics of the operation and effectively improve the presence and safety of the operation. To verify the effectiveness of the haptic feedback of the leader device, a verification experiment was conducted between the electric current and the force/torque when the angle between the operating rod and the rhombus structure was 30 degrees. The results indicated that the developed leader device can provide the haptic feedback to the surgeon. The leader device with haptic feedback has the potential to improve the human-robot collaboration performance during the operation.