In this section

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

@article{Franco:2021:10.1109/LCSYS.2021.3133128,
author = {Franco, E},
doi = {10.1109/LCSYS.2021.3133128},
journal = {IEEE Control Systems Letters},
pages = {1748--1753},
title = {Energy shaping control of hydraulic soft continuum planar manipulators},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2021.3133128},
volume = {6},
year = {2021}
}

Download

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - This letter investigates the model-based control of a class of soft continuum manipulators with hydraulic actuation that bend on a plane due to pressurization of one or more internal chambers. A port-Hamiltonian formulation is employed to describe the system dynamics, which includes the pressure dynamics of the hydraulic fluid. A new nonlinear control law is constructed with an energy-shaping approach, and it is combined with an adaptive observer to compensate the effect of unknown external forces. Stability conditions are investigated with a Lyapunov approach, and the effect of the tuning parameters and of key model parameters is discussed. The effectiveness of the controller is demonstrated with numerical simulations.
AU  - Franco,E
DO  - 10.1109/LCSYS.2021.3133128
EP  - 1753
PY  - 2021///
SN  - 2475-1456
SP  - 1748
TI  - Energy shaping control of hydraulic soft continuum planar manipulators
T2  - IEEE Control Systems Letters
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2021.3133128
UR  - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9638969
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/93188
VL  - 6
ER  -

Download