Real-time Robotic Flexible Needle Insertion In Deformable Living Organs Using Isolated Objective Constraint

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative approach for executing robotic needle insertion within deformable living organs. The objective is to maintain the insertion pivot point on the skin, which remains stationary. At the same time, the organs undergo displacement and deformation due to respiration. Therefore, real-time control and precise needle steering are crucial. The proposed method relies on isolated objective constraints to ensure the objectives while steering the needle along a predefined trajectory. The needle insertion process benefits from Finite Element (FE) models to simulate the environment and address the inverse problem to drive the robot's end effector (EE) by re-evaluating the objective functions in the constraint space for each time step. So, the desired motion of the robot's EE could be calculated at a small cost for non-linear functions in real-time, resulting in better precision and reducing stress caused to the organs.