Stiffness rendering on soft tangible devices controlled through inverse FEM simulation

Frédérick Largillière (1, 2, 3) , Eulalie Coevoet (2) , Mario Sanz Lopez (2) , Laurent Grisoni (1, 3) , Christian Duriez (1, 2)

1 CRIStAL - Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Signal et Automatique de Lille - UMR 9189
2 DEFROST - Deformable Robots Simulation Team
3 MINT2 - Méthodes et outils pour l'Interaction à gestes

Haptic rendering of soft bodies is essential in medical simulations of procedures such as surgery or palpation. The most commonly used approach is to recreate the sense of touch using a specific design and control of a robotic arm. In this paper, we propose a new approach, based on soft-robotics technology. We create a tangible deformable device that allows users to " touch " soft tissues and perceive mechanical material properties, in a realistic manner. The device is able to dynamically provide user touch with different stiffness perceptions, thanks to actuators placed at the boundaries. We introduce a control algorithm, based on inverse Finite Element Analysis, which controls the actuators in order to recreate a desired stiffness that corresponds to the contact with soft tissues in the virtual environment. The approach uses antagonistic actuation principle to create a wide range of stiffness. We validate our algorithm and demonstrate the method using prototypes based on simple mechanisms.

Domains: Robotics [cs.RO]

Frédérick Largillière, Eulalie Coevoet, Mario Sanz Lopez, Laurent Grisoni, Christian Duriez. Stiffness rendering on soft tangible devices controlled through inverse FEM simulation. International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems - IROS 2016, Oct 2016, Daejeon, South Korea. ⟨hal-01386787⟩