Effects of artificial force feedback in laparoscopic surgery training simulators

The use of haptic devices to provide artificial force feedback in teleoperation has been shown to enhance performance. An experiment was conducted to examine how artificial (simulated) force feedback is utilized, compared with real force feedback, in a laparoscopic tissue-probing task. Actual (real) forces in probing a double-layer silicon gel mass were replicated and exaggerated in a virtual environment using a haptic device. Ten subjects performed the probing task in four different artificial force feedback conditions: 1) high fidelity force feedback, 2) proportionately exaggerated feedback, 3) disproportionately exaggerated relative force feedback, and 4) reversed disproportionately exaggerated relative force feedback. Results showed that a higher maximum force was applied, detection time was longer, and distance error was greater in virtual probing compared to real probing. Detection time was significantly greater in the virtual high fidelity condition compared to the disproportionately exaggerated force feedback conditions. These results suggest that artificial force information may be processed differently than real haptic information, leading to higher force application that could potentially damage tissues, lower efficiency, and reduced accuracy in tissue probing tasks.