Implicit active constraints for a compliant surgical manipulator

Abstract

Abstract-Active constraints are high-level control algorithms providing software-generated force feedback from virtual environments. When applied to surgery, they can assist surgeons in performing complex tasks by guiding their navigation pathways along narrow, possibly convoluted, surgical trajectories. This paper presents a method to generate concave tubular constraints implicitly from pre-or intra-operative data. Patient-specific constraints may be generated efficiently with the proposed scheme and readily deployed in various surgical scenarios. Furthermore, a five degree-of-freedom active constraint framework is proposed, which accounts for the entire tool shaft rather than just the end-effector, and is applicable to both static and dynamic active constraint scenarios. Experimental results on simulated surgical tasks show that this framework can improve safety and accuracy as well as reduce the perceived workload during complex surgical tasks.

On-line collision-free inverse kinematics with frictional active constraints for effective control of unstable concentric tube robots

“…The manipulation of tissue through narrow and sometimes torturous surgical corridors is particularly problematic in endoscopic intraventricular and transventricular surgery. Therefore the use of concentric tube robots [12], and the incorporation of active constraints [19], may allow for improved effectiveness and safety respectively. Eleven participants (seven male, ten right-handed, six familiar with haptic devices, all novices regarding the medical procedure) took part in a user study to navigate through hydrocephalic ventricles to simulate electroclautery of thirteen targets.…”

Implicit active constraints for safe and effective guidance of unstable concentric tube robots

“…Ideally, the user's intention is sufficient to define a constraint [20]. In the following, a probabilistic roadmap approach is used to generate on-line constraints based on the user simply specifying the desired surgical target.…”

“…Implicit active constraints (IAC) contribute towards constraint generation [20]. While in conventional AC a human explicitely defines the constraint, e.g.…”

Motor channelling for safe and effective dynamic constraints in Minimally Invasive Surgery

“…Tracking multiple points simultaneously and performing in parallel signal reconstruction for each one of them allows a non-rigid motion compensation. In our experimental implementation, the EM sensor needs to be registered only with the robot base frame since only the relative displacement of the tracked point is necessary to compensate translational motion (9).…”

“…Implementations include master-slave platforms [8], hands-on manipulators [9] and flexible robots [10]. Pre-operative offline motion planning is often required to compensate anatomy dynamics [11].…”