Proceedings of the ... IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems最新文献

This paper describes a multitasking robotic platform for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). The device is designed to be introduced through a standard trocar port. Once the device is inserted to the desired surgical site, it can be reconfigured by lifting an articulated section, and protruding two tendon driven flexible arms. Each of the arms holds an interchangeable surgical instrument. The articulated section features a 2 Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) universal joint followed by a single DoF yaw joint. It incorporates an on-board camera and LED light source at the distal end, leaving a Ø3mm channel for an additional instrument. The main shaft of the robot is largely hollow, leaving ample space for the insertion of two tendon driven flexible arms integrated with surgical instruments. The ex-vivo and in-vivo experiments demonstrate the potential clinical value of the device for performing surgical tasks through single incision or natural orifice transluminal procedures.

Surgical robots are gaining favor in part due to their capacity to reach remote locations within the body. Continuum robots are especially well suited for accessing deep spaces such as cerebral ventricles within the brain. Due to the entry point constraints and complicated structure, current techniques do not allow surgeons to access the full volume of the ventricles. The ability to access the ventricles with a dexterous robot would have significant clinical implications. This paper presents a concentric tube manipulator mated to a robotically controlled flexible endoscope. The device adds three degrees of freedom to the standard neuroendoscope and roboticizes the entire package allowing the operator to conveniently manipulate the device. To demonstrate the improved functionality, we use an in-silica virtual model as well as an ex-vivo anatomic model of a patient with a treatable form of hydrocephalus. In these experiments we demonstrate that the augmented and roboticized endoscope can efficiently reach critical regions that a manual scope cannot.

Given the ease that humans have with using a keyboard and mouse in typical, non-colocated computer interaction, many studies have investigated the value of colocating the visual field and haptic workspaces using immersive virtual reality (VR) modalities. Significant understanding has been gained by previous work comparing physical tasks against VR tasks, visuo-haptic co-location versus non-colocation, and even visuo-haptic rotational misalignments in VR. However, few studies have explored all of these paradigms in context with each other and it is difficult to do inter-study comparisons because of the variation in tested motor tasks. Therefore, the goal for the current study was to characterize human performance of Fitts' point-to-point reaching task - an established test of manual performance - in the physical, co-located/non-colocated VR, and rotated VR visualization conditions. A key finding was the significant decrease observed in end-point error for tasks performed in a co-located virtual reality environment. The results also showed cyclic performance degradations due to rotational visuo-haptic misalignments that were consistent with trends reported by the literature.

Surgical repair of the mitral valve is a difficult procedure that is often avoided in favor of less effective valve replacement because of the associated technical challenges facing non-expert surgeons. In the interest of increasing the rate of valve repair, an accurate, interactive surgical simulator for mitral valve repair was developed. With a haptic interface, users can interact with a mechanical model during simulation to aid in the development of a surgical plan and then virtually implement the procedure to assess its efficacy. Sub-millimeter accuracy was achieved in a validation study, and the system was successfully used by a cardiac surgeon to repair three virtual pathological valves.

HeartLander, a small mobile robot designed to provide treatments to the surface of the beating heart, overcomes a major difficulty of minimally invasive cardiac surgery, providing a stable operating platform. This is achieved inherently in the way the robot adheres to and crawls over the surface of the heart. This mode of operation does not require physiological motion compensation to provide this stable environment; however, modeling of physiological motion is advantageous in providing more accurate position estimation as well as synchronization of motion to the physiological cycles. The work presented uses an Extended Kalman Filter framework to estimate parameters of non-stationary Fourier series models of the motion of the heart due to the respiratory and cardiac cycles as well as the position of the robot as it moves over the surface of the heart. The proposed method is demonstrated in the laboratory with HeartLander operating on a physiological motion simulator. Improved performance is demonstrated in comparison to the filtering methods previously used with HeartLander. The use of detected physiological cycle phases to synchronize locomotion of HeartLander is also described.

This paper presents a novel actuation technology for robotically assisted MRI-guided interventional procedures. Compact and wireless, the actuators are both powered and controlled by the MRI scanner. The design concept and performance limits are described and derived analytically. Simulation and experiments in a clinical MR scanner are used to validate the analysis and to demonstrate the capability of the approach for needle biopsies. The concepts of actuator locking mechanisms and multi-axis control are also introduced.

Active compensation of physiological tremor for handheld micromanipulators depends on fast control and actuation responses. Because of real-world latencies, real-time compensation is usually not completely effective at eliminating unwanted hand motion. By modeling tremor, more effective cancellation is possible by anticipating future hand motion. We propose a feedforward control strategy that utilizes tremor velocity from a state-estimating Kalman filter. We demonstrate that estimating hand motion in a feedforward controller overcomes real-world latencies in micromanipulator actuation. In hold-still tasks with a fully handheld micromanipulator, the proposed feedforward approach improves tremor rejection by over 50%.

Three-dimensional ultrasound can be an effective imaging modality for image-guided interventions since it enables visualization of both the instruments and the tissue. For robotic applications, its realtime frame rates create the potential for image-based instrument tracking and servoing. These capabilities can enable improved instrument visualization, compensation for tissue motion as well as surgical task automation. Continuum robots, whose shape comprises a smooth curve along their length, are well suited for minimally invasive procedures. Existing techniques for ultrasound tracking, however, are limited to straight, laparoscopic-type instruments and thus are not applicable to continuum robot tracking. Toward the goal of developing tracking algorithms for continuum robots, this paper presents a method for detecting a robot comprised of a single constant curvature in a 3D ultrasound volume. Computational efficiency is achieved by decomposing the six-dimensional circle estimation problem into two sequential three-dimensional estimation problems. Simulation and experiment are used to evaluate the proposed method.

An active needle is proposed for the development of MRI guided percutaneous procedures. The needle uses internal laser heating, conducted via optical fibers, of a shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator to produce bending in the distal section of the needle. Active bending of the needle as it is inserted allows it to reach small targets while overcoming the effects of interactions with surrounding tissue, which can otherwise deflect the needle away from its ideal path. The active section is designed to bend preferentially in one direction under actuation, and is also made from SMA for its combination of MR and bio-compatibility and its superelastic bending properties. A prototype, with a size equivalent to standard 16G biopsy needle, exhibits significant bending with a tip rotation of more than 10°. A numerical analysis and experiments provide information concerning the required amount of heating and guidance for design of efficient optical heating systems.

We consider the stochastic patterns of a system of communicating, or coupled, self-propelled particles in the presence of noise and communication time delay. For sufficiently large environmental noise, there exists a transition between a translating state and a rotating state with stationary center of mass. Time delayed communication creates a bifurcation pattern dependent on the coupling amplitude between particles. Using a mean field model in the large number limit, we show how the complete bifurcation unfolds in the presence of communication delay and coupling amplitude. Relative to the center of mass, the patterns can then be described as transitions between translation, rotation about a stationary point, or a rotating swarm, where the center of mass undergoes a Hopf bifurcation from steady state to a limit cycle. Examples of some of the stochastic patterns will be given for large numbers of particles.