Whisker sensor design for three dimensional position measurement in robotic assisted beating heart surgery

In the robotic-assisted off-pump Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) surgery, surgeon performs the operation with intelligent robotic instruments controlled through teleoperation that replace conventional surgical tools. The robotic tools actively cancel the relative motion between the surgical instruments and the point of interest on the beating heart. Measuring the motion of the heart during this operation is an important part of this scheme. In this paper, a novel whisker sensor design to measure the heart motion in three dimensions (3-D) is presented. The proposed whisker sensor is a flexible contact sensor. Low stiffness of the sensor prevents damage on the tissue it contacts. This paper explains the design concept, and reports the simulation and measurement results of the prototype whisker position sensor.