• Iñaki Díaz, Jorge Juan Gil, and Marcos Louredo.
• CEIT and TECNUN, University of Navarra, Paseo Manuel Lardizábal 15, 20018 San Sebastián, Spain. Electronic address: idiaz@ceit.es.
• Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2014 Sep 1; 116 (2): 97-104.

AbstractThe research and development of mechatronic aids for surgery is a persistent challenge in the field of robotic surgery. This paper presents a new haptic pedal conceived to assist surgeons in the operating room by transmitting real-time surgical information through the foot. An effective human-robot interaction system for medical practice must exchange appropriate information with the operator as quickly and accurately as possible. Moreover, information must flow through the appropriate sensory modalities for a natural and simple interaction. However, users of current robotic systems might experience cognitive overload and be increasingly overwhelmed by data streams from multiple modalities. A new haptic channel is thus explored to complement and improve existing systems. A preliminary set of experiments has been carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed system in a virtual surgical drilling task. The results of the experiments show the effectiveness of the haptic pedal in providing surgical information through the foot. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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