Dynamic coupling haptic suturing based on orthogonal decomposition

Suturing task is one of the apparently most common actions during any surgery, however this is a complex task since it involves precise force feedback with a needle and thread, interaction with deformable tissue and organs, puncturing and thread stretching. This is a type of complex constrained motion task due to at the piercing constraint points must be valid all time with a continuum thread. In this paper, a methodology for haptic rendering of suturing task over deformable objects is presented and experimentally illustrated in real time. To this end, an orthogonal decomposition at the contact piercing constraint point of the haptic device introduces a coupled dynamic model of suturing with flexible thread. The thread model is based on constrained Lagrangian splines, whose control points coincides with the contact piercing constraint point, so as to render a consistent differential algebraic system, with the tissue mesh modeled by a distributed dynamical inertial mass-spring-damper system. The methodology provides dynamic kinesthetic feedback for effective haptic rendering.