title: Haptic feedback and control of a flexible surgical endoscopic robot.
abstract: A flexible endoscope could reach the potential surgical site via a single small incision on the patient or even through natural orifices, making it a very promising platform for surgical procedures. However, endoscopic surgery has strict spatial constraints on both tool-channel size and surgical site volume. It is therefore very challenging to deploy and control dexterous robotic instruments to conduct surgical procedures endoscopically. Pioneering endoscopic surgical robots have already been introduced, but the performance is limited by the flexible neck of the robot that passes through the endoscope tool channel. In this article we present a series of new developments to improve the performance of the robot: a force transmission model to address flexibility, elongation study for precise position control, and tissue property modeling for haptic feedback. Validation experiment results are presented for each sector. An integrated control architecture of the robot system is given in the end.
authors.affiliation: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, USA; School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Electronic address: zheng.wang@ieee.org.
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zhenglong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Soo Jay
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Phee
mesh_terms: D004724:Endoscopy / Q000295:instrumentation*; D005246:Feedback; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D012371:Robotics; D013270:Stomach / Q000601:surgery
keywords: Endoscopic surgery; Haptic feedback; Modeling; Surgical robotics