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

@inproceedings{Franco:2023:10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160743,
author = {Franco, E and Aktas, A and Treratanakulchai, S and Garriga, Casanovas A and Donder, A and Rodriguez, y Baena F},
doi = {10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160743},
pages = {567--572},
publisher = {IEEE},
title = {Discrete-time model based control of soft manipulator with FBG sensing},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160743},
year = {2023}
}

Download

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - In this article we investigate the discrete-time model based control of a planar soft continuum manipulator with proprioceptive sensing provided by fiber Bragg gratings.A control algorithm is designed with a discrete-time energyshaping approach which is extended to account for control-related lag of digital nature. A discrete-time nonlinear observer is employed to estimate the uncertain bending stiffness of the manipulator and to compensate constant matched disturbances. Simulations and experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the controller compared to a continuous time implementation.
AU  - Franco,E
AU  - Aktas,A
AU  - Treratanakulchai,S
AU  - Garriga,Casanovas A
AU  - Donder,A
AU  - Rodriguez,y Baena F
DO  - 10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160743
EP  - 572
PB  - IEEE
PY  - 2023///
SP  - 567
TI  - Discrete-time model based control of soft manipulator with FBG sensing
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160743
UR  - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10160743
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/103249
ER  -