Haptic Display for a Virtual Reality Simulator for Flexible Endoscopy

A simulation system for flexible endoscopy is described, based on virtual reality techniques. The physician moves the flexible endoscope inside a pipe, in which forces are applied to it. In addition the navigation wheels provide force feedback from the bending of the endoscope's tip. The paper focuses on the special purpose haptic display which actively generates forces to model the complex interaction of physician, endoscope and patient with high accuracy. Moreover fast algorithms for the force simulation in real-time are presented.