Design of an Origami-Inspired Haptic Interface for Catheter Interventional Surgery

Teleoperated surgical robots with haptic interfaces can assist surgeons in managing the forces involved in tool–tissue interaction during complex surgical procedures, such as catheter intervention surgery. However, most haptic interfaces are constructed using conventional mechanisms such as motors, linkages, and clutches, which often result in mechanical friction, bulk, and potential rigid interaction dangers. This article presents a novel origami-inspired haptic interface (OHI) to address these issues and provide force/torque feedback. The OHI utilizes soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) and a soft pneumatic brake (SPB) to drive the interface and generate haptic feedback. In addition, we derive models for the SPA, origami-inspired mechanism (OIM), and SPB to investigate the relationship between pressure and the force/torque generated by the OHI. Experimental validation of these models confirms their accuracy, and the evaluation demonstrates that the OHI can generate and control a haptic force of up to 14.4 N and a resistant torque of up to 27.8 mN $\cdot \text{m}$ . These results indicate that the novel haptic interface exhibits favorable performance for catheter interventional surgery (CIS) by providing force/torque haptic feedback.