Learning Visual Force Estimation during Teleoperation of a Surgical Robot
Leading commercial robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) platforms such as the da Vinci Surgical System do not provide force feedback to the surgeon. Instead, surgeons rely on visual force estimation to judge the amount of force they apply to tissue. This is a difficult skill that takes a long time to master. Experienced surgeons often report being able to 'feel' tissue manipulation forces in their hands. Motivated by the need to accelerate the learning of visual force estimation in RMIS, we investigate the effects of training with force feedback on visual force estimation during teleoperated soft environment manipulation.
