Since nuclear power plant (NPP) dismantling carries the possibility of radiation exposure from a hazardous environment, it’s important to minimize that by using a remote manipulator et al. However, due to complexity of nuclear facilities, it’s necessary for operators to increase their proficiency by operating in advance in a virtual environment. In this research, we propose a virtual manipulator system using a haptic device for NPP’s reactor vessel internals (RVI) dismantling which can realistically manipulate.
In robotic surgery, a surgeon checks only a surgical site of patient in the progress of surgery by vision and sound information. In order to solve this limited information, the haptic function is necessary. And haptic surgical robot is also necessary to design a haptic master device. The master device for laparoscope operation with cable-conduit was developed in previous research to give haptic function. It suggested a possibility of developing a master device by using the cable-conduit. However, it is very inconvenient to use. Therefore, this paper suggests a new mechanism design structure to solve the problems of the previous work by new forming a new master device. And it has proved that it’s usability is better than previous one. Furthermore it has also experimented and analyzed that a backlash of new master device is compensated by smooth backlash inverse algorithm.
When using commercialized robot assisted laparoscopic, surgeon has met some problems to depend only on image of the surgical field. To solve it, there were various researches. The previous study showed that it is possible to estimate the operation force on the commercialized instrument inside patient without sensors. To apply the estimated force to a haptic master console for the laparoscopy surgical robot system, the light haptic master console should be designed. This paper suggests the design of lighter master console handle to reduce a weight of the console whose structure can match with the joint and DOF of an instrument. A cable-conduit mechanism is designed to make light structure to perform a delicate manipulation. The cable-conduit mechanism removes the weight and inertia of link caused by haptic actuator and encoder which is separated from handle link of a manipulator.