Application of Haptic Virtual Fixtures in Psychomotor Skill Development for Robotic Surgical Training

Tactile (cutaneous) and kinaesthetic (forces) information are the main sensory feedback modalities used by human beings to interact with the world around them. Exploiting these input, we can feel different objects in terms of textures and materials, thus understanding how to properly manage them. Indeed, we are able to carry out also very precise tasks in small workspace, if an adequate training is received; this is the case of Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). Nowadays, the surgery field has seen the advent of teleoperation: a robotic system is used as interface between the surgeon and the patient, allowing better results in terms of after-surgery recovery period and overall quality. The most used teleoperation robot, the da Vinci\textsuperscript{\textregistered} Surgical System, lacks of haptic feedback interaction with the user, thus relying on visual information only. This results in specific training modalities, since movements and procedure execution are different than laparoscopic surgery, but also new training environment modalities, mainly based on virtual reality. Psychomotor skills are fundamental for every basic task human beings have to do: they are basic abilities such as movement, coordination, manipulation, and speed, that characterize how human beings compute different exercises. For this reason, psychomotor tasks represent the first modules of the main training protocols for robotic surgery. In addition, the majority of these simulators do not provide any feedback but visual ones, so to replicate as closely as possible the real teleoperation system. However, the use of haptic feedback under the form of \textit{virtual fixtures} has brought positive results in rehabilitation field, as a tool to re-learn daily tasks, and in movement reshaping. Our approach aims to assess the use of these feedback in skill training, to understand if it is meaningful and useful to apply haptic feedback to learn tasks that actually do not provide them during their real execution. Two different approaches inspired by rehabilitation studies will be compared, both based on the error augmentation concept. In this study, the experimental setup that will be used for the feedback analysis is presented, as a general application for psychomotor skill training. The validation will take place in future works, firstly finding the optimal training parameters, then, conducting the actual skill learning study.