Imperial College London
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Professor Thrishantha Nanayakkara

Faculty of Engineering, Dyson School of Design Engineering

Professor in Robotics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)7902 396 681t.nanayakkara Website CV

 
 
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Location

 

RCS 1M07Dyson BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Sornkarn:2016:10.1109/TOH.2016.2615924,
author = {Sornkarn, N and Nanayakkara, T},
doi = {10.1109/TOH.2016.2615924},
journal = {IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON HAPTICS},
pages = {183--195},
title = {Can a Soft Robotic Probe Use Stiffness Control Like a Human Finger to Improve Efficacy of Haptic Perception?},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2016.2615924},
volume = {10},
year = {2016}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - When humans are asked to palpate a soft tissue to locate a hard nodule, they regulate the stiffness, speed, and force of the finger during examination. If we understand the relationship between these behavioral variables and haptic information gain (transfer entropy) during manual probing, we can improve the efficacy of soft robotic probes for soft tissue palpation, such as in tumor localization in minimally invasive surgery. Here, we recorded the muscle co-contraction activity of the finger using EMG sensors to address the question as to whether joint stiffness control during manual palpation plays an important role in the haptic information gain. To address this question, we used a soft robotic probe with a controllable stiffness joint and a force sensor mounted at the base to represent the function of the tendon in a biological finger. Then, we trained a Markov chain using muscle co-contraction patterns of human subjects, and used it to control the stiffness of the soft robotic probe in the same soft tissue palpation task. The soft robotic experiments showed that haptic information gain about the depth of the hard nodule can be maximized by varying the internal stiffness of the soft probe.
AU  - Sornkarn,N
AU  - Nanayakkara,T
DO  - 10.1109/TOH.2016.2615924
EP  - 195
PY  - 2016///
SN  - 1939-1412
SP  - 183
TI  - Can a Soft Robotic Probe Use Stiffness Control Like a Human Finger to Improve Efficacy of Haptic Perception?
T2  - IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON HAPTICS
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2016.2615924
UR  - http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000404039600004&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/48522
VL  - 10
ER  -
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