title: A quasi-static model of wheel-tissue interaction for surgical robotics.
abstract: Wheel-driven mobile in vivo robotic devices can provide an unconstrained platform for visualization and task performance. Careful understanding of the wheel-tissue interaction is necessary to predict in vivo performance of medical mobility systems. Here, an analytical study of the friction involving rolling contact of a surgical wheel, moving at constant velocities over soft tissue, is presented and verified. A quasi-static frictionless solution is first derived from existing theory, and newly developed theory considering frictional effects is later introduced. In this analysis, the effect of friction on wheel mobility over a viscoelastic substrate is analyzed with wheel velocity as the only changing variable. The analytical model is later verified by experiments and Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations. A simple application of this model to help design a surgical robot is also presented. Additional results indicate that the resistance force, which arises from the tissue viscosity, approaches zero for small and very large wheel velocities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder, 427 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. xin.wang@colorado.edu
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Levin J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Sliker
authors.forename: H Jerry
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.forename: Mark E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Rentschler
mesh_terms: D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D017276:Friction; D055595:Mechanical Phenomena; D019060:Minimally Invasive Surgical Procedures / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation*
keywords: Biomechanics; Contact modeling; Mobility; Surgery; Tissue engineering