Real world haptics and telehaptics for medical applications

Conventional technologies associated with human sensations have mainly focused on visual and auditory sensations. Such technologies have provided “non-contact” supports for human activities. However, in order to realize direct and abundant human support, “contact” motion is crucial. Therefore, development of technologies for tactile and/or haptic sensation must be significant. Since haptic sensation is essentially bidirectional information and is subject to the Newton's law of action and reaction, bilateral control system with high transparency is absolutely necessary for transmission of vivid haptic sensation. Acceleration-based bilateral control (ABC) is therefore one of the solutions. This fundamental technique also presents various possibilities for expansion of real world haptics into realization of haptic communication (telehaptics), development of intelligent surgery system, and so on. Thus, this speech will mainly introduce recent progresses on applications of real world haptics and telehaptics for medical applications.