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Soft Robotics and Applied Control

Soft and flexible robotic systems for affordable healthcare.

Head of Group

B414B Bessemer Building
South Kensington Campus

What we do

Our research investigates fundamental aspects of control of soft and flexible robots for surgery. These include harnessing the intrinsic compliance of soft robots, rejecting disturbances that characterise the surgical environment, and complying with stringent safety requirements. Our ambition is to provide affordable robotic solutions for a range of surgical applications, including endoscopy, percutaneous intervention, and multi-handed surgery.

Why it is important?

Robotics for healthcare is one of the fastest growing segments in the global robotics market. However, conventional surgical robots are unaffordable in low-resource settings. Harnessing the potential of soft and flexible robots can contribute to making surgery safter, more accurate, and more accessible in low-middle income countries. These are pressing needs due to the aging population, and to the growing workforce crisis in the healthcare market.

How can it benefit patients?

Our work aims to improve accuracy, reduce the risk of injury, and reduce discomfort in percutaneous interventions such as biopsy, in diagnostic and interventional endoscopy, and in multi-handed surgery.

Dr Enrico Franco
Lecturer

Citation

BibTex format

@inproceedings{Franco:2019:10.1109/ICSTCC.2019.8886055,
author = {Franco, E and Brown, T},
doi = {10.1109/ICSTCC.2019.8886055},
pages = {1--6},
publisher = {IEEE},
title = {Energy shaping control for robotic needle insertion},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICSTCC.2019.8886055},
year = {2019}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This  work  investigates  the  use  of  energy  shaping control  to  reduce  deflection  in  slender  beams  with tip  load  and actuation  at  the  base.  The  ultimate  goal  of  this  research  is  a buckling avoidance strategy for robotic-assisted needle insertion. To  this  end,  the  rigid-link  model  of  a  flexible  beam  actuated  at the  base  and  subject  to  tip  load  is  proposed,  and  an  energy shaping approach is employed to construct a nonlinear controller that accounts for external forces. A comparative simulation study highlights  the  benefits  of  the  proposed  approach  over  a  linear control baseline and a simplified nonlinear control.
AU  - Franco,E
AU  - Brown,T
DO  - 10.1109/ICSTCC.2019.8886055
EP  - 6
PB  - IEEE
PY  - 2019///
SP  - 1
TI  - Energy shaping control for robotic needle insertion
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICSTCC.2019.8886055
UR  - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8886055
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/75013
ER  -

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