In the European Project ROBOCAST, leaded by Politecnico di Milano, the research unit at Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione at the University of Siena designed and developed the haptic loop. As reported in the time.com article:
“Needles and catheters inserted through the skull can then be moved by a probe operated by a surgeon, who can feel the resistance of the brain thanks to an advanced haptic device which gives tactile feedback to the operator of the machine. In the future, the probe will be used to perform surgical procedures not possible today, such as allowing surgeons to take a curved path from an entry point in the skull to a targeted lesion.”
Read more:
The article on time.com
http://techland.time.com/2011/11/30/the-next-step-in-robotic-neurosurgery/#ixzz1gbBHha9P
A movie on our youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v7S8YgSUG0&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Scientific paper
D. De Lorenzo, E. De Momi, R. Manganelli, I. Dyagilev, A. Formaglio, D. Prattichizzo, M. Shoham, G. Ferrigno. Force feedback in a piezoelectric linear actuator for neurosurgery. The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, 2011
http://sirslab.dii.unisi.it/pub/publi/publi/DLDeDyMaFoPrShFe-IJMRCAS11-eng.html
Domenico Prattichizzo
DP and SIRSLab's Folks Blog 