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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

@article{Franco:2016:10.1109/TMECH.2016.2577608,
author = {Franco, E and Rea, M and Gedroyc, W and Ristic, M},
doi = {10.1109/TMECH.2016.2577608},
journal = {IEEE-ASME Transactions on Mechatronics},
pages = {2595--2600},
title = {Control of a master-slave pneumatic system for teleoperated needle insertion in MRI},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMECH.2016.2577608},
volume = {21},
year = {2016}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - This paper presents the control of a pneumatically actuated master-slave system intended for teleoperated needle insertion in the liver under magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guidance. It addresses the challenge of achieving accurate needle positioning and force feedback to the operator in the case of pneumatic actuation with significant friction. Using time-delay position control as the basis, we investigate force feedback via impedance control and admittance control. For impedance control, we propose a new adaptive friction compensation algorithm that only requires a single tuning parameter. Experiments on a 1-degree of freedom prototype system using silicone rubber phantoms with distinct densities highlight the differences between impedance control and admittance control, and demonstrate superior performance compared with a traditional impedance control scheme.
AU  - Franco,E
AU  - Rea,M
AU  - Gedroyc,W
AU  - Ristic,M
DO  - 10.1109/TMECH.2016.2577608
EP  - 2600
PY  - 2016///
SN  - 1083-4435
SP  - 2595
TI  - Control of a master-slave pneumatic system for teleoperated needle insertion in MRI
T2  - IEEE-ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMECH.2016.2577608
UR  - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7486014
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/33423
VL  - 21
ER  -