A Motion Planning Approach to Automatic Obstacle Avoidance during Concentric Tube Robot Teleoperation

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Surgical Technology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Concentric tube robots are flexible, tentacle-like devices for minimally invasive surgery.
• Their complex kinematics hinder surgeons from manually ensuring the robot's shaft avoids anatomical obstacles during teleoperation.
• Safe surgical navigation requires precise control and obstacle avoidance along the robot's entire length.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate an automated motion planning approach for concentric tube robot teleoperation.
• To enable surgeons to maneuver the robot's tip to desired locations while automatically avoiding obstacles.
• To enhance safety and precision in robot-assisted minimally invasive surgical procedures.

Main Methods:

• A motion planning approach using precomputed roadmaps of collision-free robot configurations.
• Utilizing volumetric medical imaging to define anatomical obstacles.
• Implementing real-time motion adjustments based on robot tip position sensing to mitigate kinematic modeling errors.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated automatic obstacle avoidance along the robot's shaft during teleoperation.
• Achieved accurate maneuvering of the robot's tip to user-selected goal positions.
• Validated the system's performance in environments with tubular anatomical obstacles.

Conclusions:

• The proposed motion planning approach effectively enables safe and accurate teleoperation of concentric tube robots.
• Automated obstacle avoidance significantly reduces the risk of damaging sensitive anatomical structures.
• This technology has the potential to advance minimally invasive surgical techniques.