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:2022:10.1016/j.conengprac.2022.105326,
author = {Franco, E and Donaire, A},
doi = {10.1016/j.conengprac.2022.105326},
journal = {Control Engineering Practice},
title = {Energy shaping nonlinear control of underactuated needle insertion},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conengprac.2022.105326},
volume = {128},
year = {2022}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - This work investigates the position control of an underactuated mechatronic system for straight needle insertions in soft tissues. The system consists of a pneumatic cylinder pushing a slender needle supported at the base and subject to external forces at the tip due to interactions with soft tissues. The system dynamics is described by a rigid-link underactuated model for controller design purposes. The main contribution of this work is a new energy shaping control law that: (i) does not rely on the analytical solution of partial differential equations, which is a major hurdle in energy shaping techniques, and does not require partial feedback linearization, which is known to be sensitive to model uncertainties; (ii) accounts for the work of the friction forces on the pneumatic cylinder and of the lateral forces acting on the needle tip, which are estimated adaptively with nonlinear observers. For comparison purposes, an alternative controller that employs feedback linearization is also presented. Simulations and experiments on silicone rubber phantoms using a needle with axial-symmetric tip indicate that the proposed controller can reduce the needle tip rotation and the corresponding deflection compared to a PID algorithm. In case of larger insertion forces, the controller can limit the insertion depth to prevent large needle deflections: this behavior can be influenced by acting on a specific tuning parameter, thus providing additional flexibility compared to previous implementations. Finally, the proposed solution is less sensitive to parameter uncertainties than the alternative controller.
AU - Franco,E
AU - Donaire,A
DO - 10.1016/j.conengprac.2022.105326
PY - 2022///
SN - 0967-0661
TI - Energy shaping nonlinear control of underactuated needle insertion
T2 - Control Engineering Practice
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conengprac.2022.105326
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/99420
VL - 128
ER -
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