Using Industrial Robots as Haptic Devices for VR-Training

Many VR-training application require the integration of haptics, i.e. for surgical training. However, surgical VR-training is still limited to minimal invasive surgeries. For surgeries where high forces occur, like hip replacement, no VR-training applications have been developed. One cause for this is the lack of appropriate haptic devices which can deliver high forces. Novel industrial collaborative robots can provide high forces. Although, they lack control interfaces allowing to use them as haptic devices. We present 4 approaches for using these robots as general, multipurpose haptic input and output devices. The implemented approach was integrated into a VR hip replacement training application. An initial assessment demonstrates the general feasibility of our solution.