Cardiovascular diseases(CVDs) are the most common cause of death. Endovascular procedures offer a solution to treating many CVDs. Robot-assisted minimally invasive endovascular surgeries are showing improved accuracy with short patient recovery times and are also being developed such that the surgeon's exposure to ionising radiation during the procedure is eliminated. Developing such teleoperated robots have limitations, especially since natural haptic feedback to the surgeon is lost. Hence, haptic feedback is crucial, especially in endovascular procedures, to reduce intra-operative injury.
This thesis introduces a novel concept design for a ferrofluid-based feedback system for a robot-assisted endovascular system. The idea is to provide 3-D tactile feedback for a surgeon such that it enables the surgeon to manipulate a catheter intuitively. The proposed concept is a system which employs ferrofluid, which is an intelligent fluid, along with powerful electromagnets. It is envisioned to provide direction-based tactile feedback to the surgeon. A few design assumptions were considered to conceptualise the system and to validate these design assumptions, a set of experiments was performed. The optimum placement of electromagnets for the system was also determined through two experiments.
A user study with ten volunteers was conducted to provide a proof of concept for the feasibility of the concept design of this system. The test showed a 68\% compliance to sensing feedback. Direction-based feedback was accurately reported 44\% of the time. The challenges incurred during the user study were listed, and further improvements to the initial design were proposed for a functional prototype. The future scope of the system can be extended to various domains, such as the gaming industry, where full-body suits filled with ferrofluid can be developed with an array of electromagnets to provide full-body feedback to the user. The concept used here can also be extended to other systems that require a 3-d perception of forces.