Gerald A., Batliwala R., Ye J., Hsu P., Aihara H., and Russo S., "A Soft Robotic Haptic Feedback Glove for Colonoscopy Procedures", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022. Link to paper: https://sites.bu.edu/mrl/files/2022/10/IROS22_Gerald_Haptic_Glove_OK_2-1.pdf This paper presents a proof-of-concept soft robotic glove that provides haptic feedback to the surgeon’s hand during interventional endoscopy procedures, specifically colonoscopy. The glove is connected to a force sensing soft robotic sleeve that is mounted onto a colonoscope. The glove consists of pneumatic actuators that inflate in proportion to the incident forces on the soft robotic sleeve. Thus, the glove is capable of alerting the surgeon of potentially dangerous forces exerted on the colon wall by the colonoscope during the navigation. The proposed glove is adaptable to a variety of hand sizes. It features modular actuators that facilitate convenient and rapid assembly and attachment before the procedure and removal afterward. The glove is calibrated to respond to incident forces on the soft robotic sleeve ranging from 0-3 N. The glove’s actuators are able to reach an internal pressure of 53 kPa and exert forces up to 20 N, thereby relaying and amplifying the force exerted by the colonoscope on the colon to the surgeon’s hand.

Healey Fellow and Mechanical Engineering Major Arincheyan Gerald (ENG '20) talks about his summer research in soft robotics. By the end of the summer the lab was able to successfully make a skin that could respond to varying degrees of force and analyzed its behavior using pressure tests.

Gerald A., Ye J., Batliwala R., Hsu P., Pang J., and Russo S., "Soft Optical Sensor and Haptic Feedback System for Remote and Robot-Assisted Palpation", IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2023.  Robotic palpation shows significant potential to improve the accuracy and speed of tumor identification. However, robotic palpation mechanisms often lack haptic feedback, making it difficult for the surgeon to identify variations in tissue stiffness. This paper presents a soft optical sensor integrated with a wearable robotic glove for tumor detection during robotic palpation. The sensor contains an array of optical waveguides that can detect the presence of tumors embedded within a tissue phantom. Detection of a tumor results in an optical loss from the waveguide signal, triggering proportional inflation of the soft microfluidic actuators in the glove. The glove consists of four modular actuators placed at the fingertips, each corresponding to a sensing location on the waveguide array. The inflation of each actuator is proportional to the incident loss on the palpation sensor array, which is dependent on tumor depth. Thus, the glove is capable of alerting the user to the location of tumors during remote palpation.