Enhanced Transparency in Haptics-Based Master-Slave Systems

Bilateral master-slave teleoperation, in addition to requiring a haptics-capable master interface, often requires one or more force sensors, which increases the cost and complexity of the system particularly for robot-assisted surgery. In this paper, we investigate the benefits of using force sensors that measure hand/master and slave/environment interactions, and study the effects of the bilateral control structure and in particular the presence of force feedforward and local force feedback on teleoperation transparency. Human factors experiments are performed to study how haptic feedback can help improve task performance under degraded visual conditions.