Analysis of Coupling Effect in Human-Commanded Stiffness During Bilateral Tele-Impedance

Tele-impedance augments classic teleoperation by enabling the human operator to actively command remote robot stiffness in real-time, which is an essential ability to successfully interact with the unstructured and unpredictable environment. However, the literature is missing a study on benefits and drawbacks of different types of stiffness...

Ipsilateral Scapular Cutaneous Anchor System: An alternative for the harness in body-powered upper-limb prostheses

Background: Body-powered prosthesis users frequently complain about the poor cosmesis and comfort of the traditional shoulder harness. The Ipsilateral Scapular Cutaneous Anchor System offers an alternative, but it remains unclear to what extent it affects the perception and control of cable operation forces compared to the traditional shoulder...

Development of a Motion System for an Advanced Sailing Simulator

To train competitive sailing in a virtual setting, motion of the boat as well as haptic feedback of the sail lines is essential. When discussing virtual environments (VEs) the concept of presence is often used. In this study we develop a sailing simulator motion system to research what factors contribute to the participants’ sensation of...

Haptic shared control: Smoothly shifting control authority?

Literature points to persistent issues in humanautomation interaction, which are caused either when the human does not understand the automation or when the automation does not understand the human. Design guidelines for human-automation interaction aim to avoid such issues and commonly agree that the human should have continuous interaction and...

Suturing intraabdominal organs: When do we cause tissue damage?

It is generally assumed that safety of tissue manipulations during (laparoscopic) surgery is related to the magnitude of force that is exerted on the tissue. To provide trainees with performance feedback about tissuehandling skills, it is essential to define objective criteria for judging the safety of applied forces. To be of clinical relevance...

Force measurement platform for training and assessment of laparoscopic skills

Background - To improve endoscopic surgical skills, an increasing number of surgical residents practice on box or virtual-reality (VR) trainers. Current training is mainly focused on hand–eye coordination. Training methods that focus on applying the right amount of force are not yet available. Methods - The aim of this project is to develop a...

Haptic Interface for UAV Teleoperation

In the teleoperation of an uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV), the human operator is physically separated from the vehicle and lacks various multiple-sensory information such as sound, motions, and vibrations of the airframe. The operator is usually only provided with visual information, e.g., from camera images with limited resolution and field...

Fundamentals of ergonomic exoskeleton robots

This thesis is the first to provide the fundamentals of ergonomic exoskeleton design. The fundamental theory as well as technology necessary to analyze and develop ergonomic wearable robots interacting with humans is established and validated by experiments and prototypes. The fundamentals are (1) a new theoretical framework for analyzing...

Force feedback and basic laparoscopic skills

Background - Not much is known about the exact role offorce feedback in laparoscopy. This study aimed to determine whether force feedback influences movements of instruments during training in laparoscopic tasks and whether force feedback is required for training in basic laparoscopic force application tasks. Methods - A group of 19 gynecologic...

Force-directed design of a voluntary closing hand prosthesis

This paper presents the design of a body-powered voluntary closing prosthetic hand. It is argued that the movement of the fingers before establishing a grip is much less relevant for good control of the object held than the distribution of forces once the object has been contacted. Based on this notion, the configurations of forces on the...