Intelligent Control for Human-Robot Cooperation in Orthopedics Surgery

Cooperation between surgeon and robot is one of the key technologies that limit the robot to be widely used in orthopedic clinics. In this study, the evolution of human-robot cooperation methods and the control strategies for typical human-robot cooperation in robot-assisted orthopedics surgery were reviewed at first. Then an intelligent admittance control method, which combines the fuzzy model reference learning control with the virtual constraint control, is proposed to solve the requirements of intuitive human-robot interaction during orthopedics surgery. That is, a variable damping parameter model of the admittance control based on fuzzy model learning control algorithm is introduced to make the robot move freely by using the reference model of surgeon's motion equation with the minimum jerk trajectory. And the virtual constraint control method based on the principle of virtual fixture is adopted to make the robot move within the pre-defined area so as to perform more safe surgery. The basic principle and its realization of this intelligent control method are described in details. At last, a test platform is built based on our designed 6 DOF articulated robot. Experiments of safety and precision on acrylic model with this method show that the robot has the ability of better intuitive interaction and the high precision. And the pilot experiment of bone tumor resection on sawbone model shows the effectiveness of this method.