Flexible tactile sensor for minimally invasive surgery

최소 침습 수술을 위한 유연한 촉각 센서

Monitoring of mechanical properties of tissues as well as direction/quantities of forces is considered as an essential way for disease diagnosis and haptic feedback systems. There are extensively increasing interests for measuring normal/shear force and touch feelings, especially for surgery systems. Highly sensitive and flexible tactile sensor is needed in palpation for detecting cancer cyst as well as real time pressure monitoring in minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Importantly, MEMS technique with miniaturized fabrication technique is essential for the on-chip integration with biopsy and biomedical grasper. Here, we propose the flexible tactile sensor with high sensitivity based on piezoresistive effect. We analyzed the sensitivity according to the pressure and directions and showed the ability of discrimination of the different materials surfaces, illustrating the feasibility of the flexible tactile sensor for biomedical grasper by mimicking human skin.