The main objective of this thesis focuses on the construction of a new interface for Minimally Invasive Surgery training. This interface incorporates novel broad band sensory modalities that include visual, haptic and thermal technology, into the evolution of the next generation of surgical robotic and surgical simulator. Our particular novelty in this research is in using of thermal stimulation in a MIS applied perspectives. Several thermal exchange models have been designed, implemented and evaluated for telepresence and virtual reality applications. Interesting sensations have been recorded which have a direct bearing on the ability to distinguish between objects in the surrounding environment and particularly in the medical field where temperature sensing correlates with anomalies in some know diseases. A new haptic device is designed and realized by analyzing surgical tasks in terms of required dexterity, workspace, force and torque. The mechanical design constraints have been considered with respect to the general requirements for haptic interface design from what has been well established in the haptics literature. The overall device has been interfaced with an open source VR simulator (SOFA). We added in SOFA the necessary software dealing with thermal simulation using built-in data structure and methods. The integration was successful and a realistic simulation scenario with both visual and thermal feedback was achieved. Preliminary results using the overall simulation are presented.
