In this section
Soft and flexible robotic systems for affordable healthcare.
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.
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.
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
@article{Franco:2021:10.1007/s11071-021-06817-1,
author = {Franco, E and Ayatullah, T and Sugiharto, A and Garriga, Casanovas A and Virdyawan, V},
doi = {10.1007/s11071-021-06817-1},
journal = {Nonlinear Dynamics},
pages = {229--253},
title = {Nonlinear energy-based control of soft continuum pneumatic manipulators},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11071-021-06817-1},
volume = {106},
year = {2021}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - This paper investigates the model-based nonlinear control of a class of soft continuum pneumatic manipulators that bend due to pressurization of their internal chambers and that operate in the presence of disturbances. A port-Hamiltonian formulation is employed to describe the closed loop system dynamics, which includes the pressure dynamics of the pneumatic actuation, and new nonlinear control laws are constructed with an energy-based approach. In particular, a multi-step design procedure is outlined for soft continuum manipulators operating on a plane and in 3D space. The resulting nonlinear control laws are combined with adaptive observers to compensate the effect of unknown disturbances and model uncertainties. Stability conditions are investigated with a Lyapunov approach, and the effect of the tuning parameters is discussed. For comparison purposes, a different control law constructed with a backstepping procedure is also presented. The effectiveness of the control strategy is demonstrated with simulations and with experiments on a prototype. To this end, a needle valve operated by a servo motor is employed instead of more sophisticated digital pressure regulators. The proposed controllers effectively regulate the tip rotation of the prototype, while preventing vibrations and compensating the effects of disturbances, and demonstrate improved performance compared to the backstepping alternative and to a PID algorithm.
AU - Franco,E
AU - Ayatullah,T
AU - Sugiharto,A
AU - Garriga,Casanovas A
AU - Virdyawan,V
DO - 10.1007/s11071-021-06817-1
EP - 253
PY - 2021///
SN - 0924-090X
SP - 229
TI - Nonlinear energy-based control of soft continuum pneumatic manipulators
T2 - Nonlinear Dynamics
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11071-021-06817-1
UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11071-021-06817-1
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/91455
VL - 106
ER -
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