iFeel3: A Haptic Device for Virtual Reality Dental Surgery Simulation

The haptic device plays an important role in improving the immersion of a dental training system. Most existing dental simulation systems use commercial haptic devices which are not designed for meeting specific characteristics of dental operation. Furthermore, few study on the quantified requirement for haptic device in dental surgery simulation is carried out. In this paper, performance specifications of a haptic device for dental training are presented through analyzing the manipulation features of typical dental surgery. Based on identified requirements, a haptic device (i.e. iFeel3) was designed. Typical performances including workspace, output force and translational resolution, are analyzed. Furthermore the method of improving the haptic device's stiffness is presented. The performance of the introduced device is validated by dental probing experiments.