Haptic feedback and sensory substitution during telemanipulated suturing

Various modes of sensory feedback to the user have the potential to enhance performance in robot-assisted surgery. In this paper, it is hypothesized that substituting or augmenting force feedback by visual representation of the force levels can potentially assist the user in limiting the amount of applied forces. In addition to confirming the above for a telemanipulated suturing task, the results indicate that there is a trade-off between the magnitudes of applied forces and the time required, to complete the task.