Electromechanical design of a miniature tactile shape display for minimally invasive surgery

A design of a new tactile shape display to be used in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is presented. It consists of 32 micro brushless motors in a 4-by-8 configuration, and the total size is 27 mm*20 mm*18 mm. The main restrictive design parameter is the size of the display because it should be attached to a laparoscopic grasper. Another important design parameter is modularity, as it is desirable to do experiments with several actuator pins. Each actuator has 3 mm indentation and can provide 1.7 N at a frequency of 2 Hz at full excursion. The pin spacing is 2.7 mm with a pin diameter of up to 2.65 mm.