Data-driven comparison of four cutaneous displays for pinching palpation in robotic surgery

Current teleoperated surgical robots do not provide surgeons with haptic feedback, due in part to the safety risks associated with grounded kinesthetic forces. Ungrounded cutaneous feedback provides an elegant and inherently stable way to refer haptic feedback to the surgeon in such situations. Choosing the most appropriate display, however, is challenging given the substantial number of unique cutaneous displays presented in the literature. In this work, we demonstrate how measuring the space of tactile sensations that a device can create can be employed to objectively compare different cutaneous displays for a specific task. We built four cutaneous displays and compared their ability to render sensations measured while pinching four disparate materials with a biomimetic tactile sensor. As predicted, quantitative tactile rendering errors varied significantly across devices and materials. The results of this comparison can be used to design better cutaneous displays for pinching palpation in robotic surgery. Furthermore, the proposed approach could provide a useful tool for evaluating novel cutaneous devices for various other tactile tasks, providing an objective framework to supplement and guide future human subject studies.