Design of simple structured tactile sensor for the minimally invasive robotic palpation

For robotic palpation in minimally invasive surgery (MIS), a simple structured tactile sensor is presented in this paper. Within current MIS, it is not easy to detect abnormal tissue. And it is even more difficult in commercial robotic MIS, since there is no tool which can provide haptic information to surgeons. To enable robotic palpation in MIS, a tactile sensor is designed to have the spatial resolution of the human finger using the micro strain gages. By attaching this sensor to the robotic surgical tools, it is expected that surgeons can perform in-vivo palpation during the MIS. Experimental tests conducted with artificial skin tissues, which have several tumor-like particles, confirm the feasibility of the proposed sensor.