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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{Treratanakulchai:2023:10.1109/ICCAD57653.2023.10152366,
author = {Treratanakulchai, S and Franco, E and Rodriguez, y Baena F},
doi = {10.1109/ICCAD57653.2023.10152366},
pages = {1--6},
publisher = {IEEE},
title = {Model-free position control of a soft continuum manipulator in cartesian space},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICCAD57653.2023.10152366},
year = {2023}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This work investigates the position control in Cartesian space of a soft continuum manipulator with pneumatic actuation. To this end, we employ a feedback integral action initialized using an optimized mapping between pressure and tip position. This approach is detailed for a manipulator consisting of either a single actuated segment or of two actuated segments connected in series. Experiments are conducted on individual prototypes and with a teleoperation setup including a master unit from our track record.
AU  - Treratanakulchai,S
AU  - Franco,E
AU  - Rodriguez,y Baena F
DO  - 10.1109/ICCAD57653.2023.10152366
EP  - 6
PB  - IEEE
PY  - 2023///
SP  - 1
TI  - Model-free position control of a soft continuum manipulator in cartesian space
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICCAD57653.2023.10152366
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/104017
ER  -

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