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:2024:10.1002/rnc.7151,
author = {Franco, E and Arpenti, P and Donaire, A},
doi = {10.1002/rnc.7151},
journal = {International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control},
pages = {3565--3585},
title = {Integral passivity-based control of underactuated mechanical systems with state-dependent matched disturbances},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/rnc.7151},
volume = {34},
year = {2024}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - This work investigates the energy shaping control of a class of underactuated mechanical systems subject to state-dependent linearly parameterized matched disturbances. To this end, a new integral interconnection and damping-assignment passivity-based design is proposed. The controller design is developed for systems subject to either momenta-dependent disturbances or position-dependent disturbances or to both simultaneously. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with numerical simulations on three examples: an Acrobot system with nonlinear friction; a ball-on-beam system with constant and position-dependent disturbances; a disk-on-disk system with a complete set of state-dependent disturbances. In all examples, the proposed controller shows better performance compared to previous implementations.
AU - Franco,E
AU - Arpenti,P
AU - Donaire,A
DO - 10.1002/rnc.7151
EP - 3585
PY - 2024///
SN - 1049-8923
SP - 3565
TI - Integral passivity-based control of underactuated mechanical systems with state-dependent matched disturbances
T2 - International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/rnc.7151
UR - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rnc.7151
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/108887
VL - 34
ER -
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