Cutaneous/Tactile Haptic Feedback in Robotic Teleoperation: Motivation, Survey, and Perspectives

Cutaneous haptic feedback has recently received great attention from researchers in the robotic teleoperation field, as it has been proven to convey rich information to the human operator while guaranteeing the safety and stability of the control loop. In fact, delivering ungrounded cutaneous cues keeps the teleoperation system stable even in the presence of time-varying destabilizing factors such as hard contacts or communication delays. This aspect is particularly relevant for all the applications and scenarios where the safety of the system is of paramount importance, as in medical robotics. This article presents an overview on cutaneous haptic interaction followed by a review of the literature on cutaneous/tactile feedback systems for robotic teleoperation, categorizing the considered systems according to the type of cutaneous stimuli they can provide to the human operator. This article ends with a discussion on the role of cutaneous haptics in robotics and the perspectives of the field.