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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:2015:10.1109/MED.2015.7158730,
author = {Franco, E and Ristic, M},
doi = {10.1109/MED.2015.7158730},
pages = {61--67},
publisher = {IEEE},
title = {Adaptive control of a master-slave system for teleoperated needle insertion under MRI-guidance},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MED.2015.7158730},
year = {2015}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY - CPAPER
AB - This paper presents the control of a master-slave system for teleoperated needle insertion under guidance by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The primary aim of our research is the robot-assisted laser ablation of liver tumors. The master-slave system consists of a master unit that sits next to the operator, outside the scanner room, and of a slave unit located inside the cylindrical MRI scanner. The needle insertion force is measured with a specially designed fiber optic force sensor mounted on the slave unit. Pneumatic actuation is employed in both master and slave in order to minimize the interference with the MRI environment. Accurate position control of the slave unit is achieved with a Time Delay Control scheme (TDC). Differently from previous designs, the force feedback on the master unit is provided by an adaptive controller that compensates the friction of the pneumatic actuator. The advantages over a baseline force controller are demonstrated with experiments on silicone rubber phantoms.
AU - Franco,E
AU - Ristic,M
DO - 10.1109/MED.2015.7158730
EP - 67
PB - IEEE
PY - 2015///
SN - 2325-369X
SP - 61
TI - Adaptive control of a master-slave system for teleoperated needle insertion under MRI-guidance
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MED.2015.7158730
UR - http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000375056800010&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/54133
ER -

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