Abstract
In dentistry, the milling operation is one of the most difficult tasks to master and is dependent on the surgeon's experience and tactile sensitivity. Dental education currently employs simple milling training using dental casts to help students acquire the delicate manipulative skills that are known as a "feather touch". Therefore, qualitative navigation of the milling operation is required. The objective of the present study is to develop a navigation system for dental milling training using an electrotactile display, which is a small device that provides unconstrained manipulation. For navigation of the amount of milling, the milling error from the predetermined desired surface is superimposed as artificial touch sensation. In this research, we propose a voxel-based stimulus design using the surface data of the dental cast. Assistance in the basic milling task is provided by the newly developed system. The results show that the desired milling operation could be achieved using the proposed system.
