Enhancement of kinesthetic perception for microsurgical teleoperation using impedance-shaping

A new control scheme is developed in this paper for a bilateral teleoperation system for microsurgical applications. The main objective of the proposed control scheme is to enhance the kinesthetic perception of the operator. First, the kinesthetic perception, based on psychophysics, is classified into three metrics of detection, sensitivity of detection, and discrimination. Additionally, a new performance index is introduced as a combination of these three metrics to quantify the kinesthetic performance. Second, modified macro-micro bilateral control system using an impedance-shaping method is proposed. The proposed controller can increase kinesthetic perception by shaping and magnifying the transmitted impedance to the operator. Finally, the performance of the proposed controller is verified in a comparison with the two-channel position-position (PP) controller, the two-channel force-position (FP) controller, and the four-channel transparency- optimized controller.