Haptics is a must-have, this remote robotics developer says

Dopl Technologies co-founder and CEO Ryan James says his startup’s robotics hardware and software for ultrasound teleprocedures includes haptics to give the remote sonographer feedback from the robot they’re controlling from afar.

“As they’re moving their remote controller, it actually feels like the controller’s touching the patient and they’re moving over the patient’s topology,” James said in the first part of our interview. “And we’ve removed latency. We have a zero latency haptic experience for the sonographer based on our computer vision models on the patient side.”

August 2026 MDO Min-Vasive Medtech Webinar Series: Ask James your own questions and learn about the company’s minimally invasive experiments and future in a live interview on Aug. 19 

“We use computer vision to understand the topology of the patient, which is used for making sure we have a gentle probe contact touch and feel as we scan, as well as making sure the robot is always in a safe work zone while we scan as well,” James continued. “And then of course, we use the force torque sensors on the robot and the pressure sensor, the end effector, to modulate force and provide that really soft touch. It feels like an apple is resting on your chest when we’re doing a cardiac scan.”

Below, James — who worked at worked at Microsoft and Nvidia before teaming up with two physicians to launch Dopl for minimally invasive remote cardiac ablation before pivoting to ultrasound — offers more details on the importance of haptics and how his team overcame the latency challenge.

The following has been lightly edited for space and clarity.

MDO: How important are the haptics? Different robotics developers and physicians have varying opinions.

James: “Haptics are very important for us. We actually started without haptics, and realized the sonographer in many cases is not holding the controller straight up and down when they’re scanning. They’re holding it to the side and they get in these complex angle. Rather than having their hand float in space — which is what we did initially — it was really important to to give them the haptic feedback they’re used to as they’re scanning. We use a six-degree-of-freedom haptic controller that tracks not only translation but also rotation and provides them that haptic feel as if they’re in the room scanning the patient in person. We really wanted to give them that familiar but enhanced interface.”

Related: J&J’s robotics R&D head discusses Ottava’s folding arms, soothing sounds and haptics capability

Can you share more about the latency issue and how exactly you mitigated that?

James: “We can tolerate above roughly 250 milliseconds latency, and we have specific controls within our software to adjust how data is sent when we’re approaching that latency or other networking constraints like bandwidth constraints. We have patents pending on the way that leverage computer vision to provide a zero-latency haptic feedback experience, and then in addition we prioritize the packets that we send based on the type of data. For example, we prioritize the ultrasound image in a high-latency environment to make sure the sonographer can always see the images very clearly. When we experience network environments that aren’t conducive to scanning, we’ll pause and wait for the network to improve.

“One thing that’s really important to note is regardless of network, we always maintain patient safety. There’s a network independent control loop on the patient side that makes sure we’re never pressing too hard on the patient and makes sure that the right commands at the right time are applied to the robot. So regardless of latency, we’ll always keep the patient safe. We’ve done scans over 3,000 miles away, we’ve done scans in an ambulance over 5G, we’ve worked in depth with T-Mobile to understand networking architectures and the different capabilities at our disposal. We spent a lot of time understanding this this question in particular.”

We’ll have more from this interview at Medical Design & Outsourcing. Subscribe to our free newsletter to watch for the next part, and join us Aug. 18-20 for the MDO Min-Vasive Medtech webinar series of live interviews with James and other medical device experts who can offer tips and advice to help other device developers innovate in minimally invasive systems and procedures.