Designing an Immersive and Efficient VR Remote Surgery Platform with Haptic Feedback Integrated with Robotic Arm System

One of the primary challenges in the field of Virtual Reality remote surgery is ensuring a high level of realism and accuracy in the virtual environment. Tackling realism and haptic feedback is particularly crucial as the absence of haptic feedback can increase the risk of delivering excessive force to tissues and organs. In response to this challenge, the aim is to design an efficient and immersive remote surgery platform that addresses the realism and haptic feedback aspects of VR remote surgery. The system focuses on creating a highly immersive virtual environment, achieved through the inclusion of a live stream of the surgery within the VR environment. Moreover, a haptic feedback system was incorporated to provide tactile sensations and vibration feedback, allowing surgeons to experience a sense of touch during the remote procedure. Additionally, the system utilizes a single robotic arm capable of holding only one instrument at a time, emulating a surgeon's hand. For the robotic arm to acknowledge the location of different surgical instruments present on the operating table, the You Only Look Once version 7 (YOLOv7) object detection model was incorporated into the system. During the user experiment, an overwhelming majority ofparticipants (96.8%) expressed that the inclusion of haptic feedback significantly enhanced their sense of immersion. However, it is worth noting that 21.9% of participants encountered delays in haptic responses.