Motion (physics)

Robot

Control (management)

Engineering

Control engineering

Surgery

Computer science

Quadratic programming

Mathematical optimization

Linear motion

Classical mechanics

Catheter

Mechanical engineering

Physics

Motion control

Contact force

Simulation

Mathematics

Artificial intelligence

Medicine

Control theory (sociology)

Mechanics

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

Catheter-based intervention plays an important role in minimally invasive surgery. For the closed-loop control of catheter robot through contacts, the loss of contact sensing along the entire catheter might result in task failure. To deal with this problem, we propose a decoupled motion control strategy which allows to control insertion and bending independently. We model the catheter robot and the contacts using the Finite Element Method. Then, we combine the simulated system and the real system for the closed-loop motion control. The control inputs are computed by solving a quadratic programming (QP) problem with a linear complementarity problem. A simplified method is proposed to solve this optimization problem by converting it into a standard QP problem. Using the proposed strategy, not only the control inputs but also the contact forces along the entire catheter can be computed without using force sensors. Finally, we validate the proposed methods using both simulation and experiments on a cable-driven continuum catheter robot for the real-time motion control through contacts.

Motion Control of Cable-Driven Continuum Catheter Robot Through Contacts