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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:2021:10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.2689,
author = {Franco, E and Tang, J and Garriga, Casanovas A and Rodriguez, y Baena F and Astolfi, A},
doi = {10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.2689},
pages = {9847--9852},
publisher = {Elsevier},
title = {Position control of soft manipulators with dynamic and kinematic uncertainties},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.2689},
year = {2021}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This work investigates the position control problem for a soft continuum manipulator in Cartesian space intended for minimally invasive surgery. Soft continuum manipulators have a large number of degrees-of-freedom and are particularly susceptible to external forces because of their compliance. This, in conjunction with the limited number of sensors typically available, results in uncertain kinematics, which further complicates the control problem. We have designed a partial state feedback that compensates the effects of external forces employing a rigid-link model and a port-Hamiltonian approach and we have investigated in detail the use of integral action to achieve position regulation in Cartesian space. Local stability conditions are discussed with a Lyapunov approach. The performance of the controller is compared with that achieved with a radial-basis-functions neural network by means of simulations and experiments on two prototypes.
AU  - Franco,E
AU  - Tang,J
AU  - Garriga,Casanovas A
AU  - Rodriguez,y Baena F
AU  - Astolfi,A
DO  - 10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.2689
EP  - 9852
PB  - Elsevier
PY  - 2021///
SN  - 2405-8963
SP  - 9847
TI  - Position control of soft manipulators with dynamic and kinematic uncertainties
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.2689
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/87780
ER  -