Design of a Haptic Forceps for Microsurgery Training

While feedback of the grasping force is necessary to manipulate objects skillfully, most Virtual Reality systems do not provide such feedback. Grasping an object is often reduced to pushing a button on the interface. This paper presents the design and realization of a haptic forceps for microsurgery training, and its integration on a haptic 6DOF DELTA device. Psychophysical experiments were first conducted to determine the critical factors for the design. The haptic forceps has similar dimensions as a microsurgery forceps and integrates two active degrees of freedom for rotation about its axis as well as opening and closing. The transformation of the force/torque from the forceps tip to the haptic device TCP, necessary to compute the desired force/torque at the forceps tip, was derived and implemented. Preliminary experiments demonstrate the potential of this haptic forceps in a VR microsurgery trainer.