A Continuum Body Force Sensor Designed for Flexible Surgical Robotic Devices

摘要

This paper presents a novel three-axis force sensorudbased on optical photo interrupters and integrated with theudrobot arm STIFF-FLOP (STIFFness controllable Flexible andudLearnable Manipulator for Surgical Operations) to measureudexternal interacting forces and torques. The ring-shapeudbio-compatible sensor presented here embeds the distributedudactuation and sensing system of the STIFF-FLOP manipulatorudand is applicable to the geometry of its structure as well to theudstructure of any other similar soft robotic manipulator. Designudand calibration procedures of the device are introduced:udexperimental results allow defining a stiffness sensor matrix forudreal-time estimation of force and torque components andudconfirm the usefulness of the proposed optical sensing approach.