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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{Franco:2014:10.1109/MESA.2014.6935546,
author = {Franco, E and Ristic, M},
doi = {10.1109/MESA.2014.6935546},
publisher = {IEEE},
title = {Design and control of needle positioner for MRI-guided laser ablation of the liver},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MESA.2014.6935546},
year = {2014}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This paper presents the design and control of a pneumatic needle positioner for laser ablation of liver tumors under guidance by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The prototype was developed to provide accurate point-to-point remote positioning of a needle guide inside an MR scanner with the aim of evaluating the potential advantages over the manual procedure. In order to minimize alterations to the MR environment the system employs plastic pneumatic actuators and 9 m long supply lines connecting with the control hardware located outside the magnet room. An optimized Sliding Mode Control (SMC) scheme was designed for the position control of the device. Wireless micro-coil fiducials are used for automatic registration in the reference frame of the MR scanner. The MRI-compatibility and the accuracy of the prototype are demonstrated with experiments in the MR scanner.
AU  - Franco,E
AU  - Ristic,M
DO  - 10.1109/MESA.2014.6935546
PB  - IEEE
PY  - 2014///
TI  - Design and control of needle positioner for MRI-guided laser ablation of the liver
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MESA.2014.6935546
UR  - http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000348664800025&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/54793
ER  -

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