Collaborative tele-haptic surgery simulation

The main thesis objective is to develop a Collaborative Tele-Haptic Surgery Simulation based on a generic system architecture for Collaborative Haptic Audio-visual Virtual Environments (C-HAVE) with integrated haptics and Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) object modeling. A haptic device is a kind of human computer interface that can generate tactile and force feedback to the users. Thus, the users can get the feel of 'touch' while manipulating the virtual objects. Three prototypes based on different architectures are quantitatively compared to demonstrate the effects of adding haptics to a task. In the generic system architecture, a Haptic Real-Time Controller (HRTC) is used to compensate the effects of network latency on the haptic coupling. A collaborative tele-haptic surgery simulation for tracheotomy is designed and implemented, based on the generic architecture. In our simulation, users from different physical locations are coupled together through haptic devices over some networks and operate collaboratively to perform the surgery. In addition, the simulation provides the functionality that a trainer can coach a trainee on how to perform the surgery successfully in a tele-mentoring manner. This thesis also contains in-depth overviews of virtual reality and haptic interfaces. The stability issue of haptic interaction with a virtual environment is discussed. Some software implemention issues of the virtual reality system are also included