A hand-held micro surgical device for contact force regulation against involuntary movements.

Involuntary movements such as heart beating in surgical environment and surgeon's tremor disturb a micro surgical manipulation and cause a risk of patient wound. Although the delicate operation is performed by a skilled surgeon, the sensitivity of the surgeon is limited to quantify the range of safe contact forces. In this paper, we developed a compact hand-held surgical device to maintain a required contact force to maintain a required contact force using a custom force sensor and a linear delta mechanism.

The cortical activation pattern by a rehabilitation robotic hand: a functional NIRS study.

Introduction: Clarification of the relationship between external stimuli and brain response has been an important topic in neuroscience and brain rehabilitation. In the current study, using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we attempted to investigate cortical activation patterns generated during execution of a rehabilitation robotic hand.

Methods: Ten normal subjects were recruited for this study.

Double loop control strategy with different time steps based on human characteristics.

This paper proposes a cooperative control strategy in consideration of the force sensitivity of human. The strategy consists of two loops: one is the intention estimation loop whose sampling time can be variable in order to investigate the effect of the sampling time; the other is the position control loop with fixed time step. A high sampling rate is not necessary for the intention estimation loop due to the bandwidth of the mechanoreceptors in humans.

Development of a one-body optical torque sensor for rehabilitation robotic systems.

This paper proposes a one-body optical torque sensor. The proposed sensor has advantages of anti-slip and low cost due to the simple one-body structure. Simulations for stress and strains analysis are accurately performed.