Engineering Incipient Slip Into Surgical Graspers to Enhance Grasp Performance

The surgical community has long reported the need for improved control of surgical graspers when handling delicate soft tissues, both to avoid the over application of force which leads to trauma, and to avoid tissue slip. The majority of research has sought to mitigate these issues through the integration of force feedback into the graspers. In this work we investigate an alternative strategy in which the grasper design is engineered to create preferential localised slip, also known as incipient slip, on the premise that this can be detected before the onset of macro slip, allowing graspers to use the minimum force required to maintain stable control. We demonstrate the ability to encourage incipient slip in a predictable and repeatable manner through the design of the grasper face profile and pattern. This provides an important foundation for development of sensing systems capable of detecting these slips during surgery to improve operative outcomes.

I. Introduction

Robotic surgical devices provide significant improvements for procedures in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), but the lack of haptic feedback is still considered a major issue by surgeons. Robotic surgical devices mechanically separate the surgeon and the patient, completely denuding the surgeon of their sense of touch. This leads to issues with the over application of force, limited grasp control and an inability to palpate tissue to identify abnormalities [1], [2].