Soft continuum manipulator for minimally invasive surgery

Using Robot Technology, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has considerably advanced over the last few decades. Recently, robotic surgical devices such as the da Vinci surgery systems take advantage of cutting-edge robot technology leading to tremendous advancement in stable and safe MIS. However, due to their rigid structure and low degrees of freedom, such medical devices require a large motion workspace to perform surgical operations.

These devices have limited ability to pass and maneuver inside small openings and confined spaces. Besides, the rigid structure damages soft tissues or organs while the manipulator passes there. For these reasons, many scientists have been developing a soft manipulator which is a soft robotic arm that can squeeze through standard MIS trocar ports enabling precise closed-loop motion control of the arm, and the stiffness of the arm can be adjusted at various regions along its length through granular jamming to overcome the issues as mentioned above.

However, they are comforted with two issues on how to guarantee closed-loop shape control of the manipulator and on how to enable it to interact with an environment.

Although pressures in the manipulator’s chambers or wire lengths pulled by actuators at its base can estimate its shapes indirectly, when external forces are exerted on it passing inside organs, its shapes change, meaning the estimation would be out of range of the real shape with a huge error. For these reasons, a few shape sensors and tactile sensors which can be integrated into soft material exist, and many new approaches using different sensing elements have been studied by academic institutions to improve their accuracy.

In this project, we have developed a soft manipulator integrating shape sensors and tactile sensors using fibre optic technology. The optical fibre is itself soft, so it never affects the stiffness of the soft manipulator, and the sensing principle is based on light intensity modulation converting light intensity to physical quantity to estimate the shape of and external forces acting on the soft manipulator from the environment.

The advantage of this approach can guarantee measuring more than 10kHz high frequency shape and external force data, the fibre optic technology relatively has lower electrical noise, and fabricating cost is very cheap.

Publications

Shiva, Y. Noh, J. Fras, A. Ataka, S.M. Sadati, H. Wurdemann, I. Walker, T. Nanayakkara, K. Althoefer, Elasticity vs. Hyperelasticity Considerations in Quasi -Static Model for Real-time Position & Force Estimation of a Soft Manipulator, Soft Robotics, 6(2), pp. 228-249, 2018; DOI: 10.1089/soro.2018.0060.

A. Shiva, A. Stilli, Y. Noh, A. Faragasso, I. D. Falco, G. Gerboni, M. Cianchetti, A. Menciassi, K. Althoefer, H. A.Wurdemann, Antagonistic Actuation Principle for a Silicone-based Soft ManipulatorSoft and Stiffness-controllable Robotics Solutions for Minimally Invasive Surgery: The STIFF-FLOP Approach, River publishers series in Automation, Control and Robotics, River Publishers, pp. 65-78, 2018.

J. Fra艣, Y. Noh, M. Macia艣, H. Wurdemann, K. Althoefer, Bio-inspired octopus robot based on novel soft fluidic actuator, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2018), pp.1583-1588; DOI: 10.1109/ICRA.2018.8460629.

Sina Sareh, Yohan Noh, Low Profile Stretch Sensor for Soft Wearable Robotics, Soft Robotics 2018, pp.479-484, 2018; DOI: 10.1109/ROBOSOFT.2018.8405372.

Jan Fra艣, Mateusz Macia艣, Yohan Noh, Kaspar Althoefer, Fluidical bending actuator designed for soft octopus robot tentacle, Soft Robotics 2018, pp. 253-257, 2018; DOI: 10.1109/ROBOSOFT.2018.8404928.

S. Sareh, Y. Noh, T. Ranzani, M. Li and K. Althoefer, Pose Sensor for STIFF-FLOP Manipulator, Soft and Stiffness-controllable Robotics Solutions for Minimally Invasive Surgery: The STIFF-FLOP Approach, River publishers series in Automation, Control and Robotics, River Publishers, pp.109-127, 2018; DOI: 10.13052/rp-9788793519718

Y. Noh, S. Sareh, E. L. Secco and K. Althoefer, Optical Force and Torque Sensor for Flexible Robotic Manipulators, Soft and Stiffness-controllable Robotics Solutions for Minimally Invasive Surgery: The STIFF-FLOP Approach, River publishers series in Automation, Control and Robotics, River Publishers, pp. 99-107, 2018; DOI: 10.13052/rp-9788793519718.

A. Arezzo, Y. Mintz, M. E. Allaix, G. Gerboni, M. Brancadoro, M. Cianchetti, A. Menciassi, H. Wurdemann, Y. Noh, J. Fras, J. Glowka, Z. Nawrat, G. Cassidy, R. Walker, S. Arolfo, M. Bonino, M. Morino, K. Althoefer, Total Mesorectal Excision using a soft and flexible robotic arm: a feasibility study in cadaver models, Surgical Endoscopy and Other Interventional Techniques, 31(1), pp. 264-273, 2017; DOI: 10.1007/s00464-016-4967-x.

S. Sareh, K. Althoefer, M. Li, Y. Noh, F. Tramacere, P. Sareh, B. Mazzolai, M. Kovac, Anchoring like octopus: sensory -physical soft artificial sucker, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 2017; DOI:10.1098/rsif.2017.0395.

S. M. H. Sadati, S. E. Naghibi, Ali Shiva, Y. Noh, Aditya Gupta, I. D. Walker, K. Althoefer, T. Nanayakkara, A Geometry Deformation Approach for Comprehensive Modelling of Compound Continuum Manipulators with Extensor Braided, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2017; DOI: 10.1109/ICRA.2016.7487702.

J. Fras, Y. Noh, H. Wurdermann, K. Althoefer, Soft Fluidic Rotary with Improved Actuation Properties, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2017), pp.5610-5615, 2017; DOI: 10.1109/IROS.2017.8206448.

A. Shiva, A. Stilli, Y. Noh, A. Faragasso, I. D. Falco, G. Gerboni, M. Cianchetti, A. Menciassi, K. Althoefer, H. A. Wurdemann, Tendon-based stiffening for a pneumatically actuated soft Manipulator, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 1(2), 7394145, pp. 632-637, 2016; DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2016.2523120.

L. Lindenroth, J. Back, A. Schoisengeier, Y. Noh, H. A. Wurdemann, K. Althoefer, H. Liu, Stiffness-based modelling of a hydraulically-actuated soft robotics manipulator, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2016), pp. 2458-2463, 2016; DOI: 10.1109/IROS.2016.7759383.

S. Sareh, Y. Noh, M. Li, T. Ranzani, H. Liu, K. Althoefer, Macrobend optical sensing for pose measurement in soft robot arms, Smart Materials and Structures, 24(12),125024, 2015; DOI: 10.1088/0964-1726/24/12/125024; DOI: 10.1088/0964-1726/24/12/125024.

F. Maghooa, A. Stilli, Y. Noh, K. Althoefer, H.A. Wurdemann, Tendon and pressure actuation for a bio-inspired manipulator based on an antagonistic principle, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015), pp. 2556 – 2561, 2015; DOI: 10.1109/ICRA.2015.7139542.

S. M. H. Sadati, Y. Noh, S. E. Naghibi, K. Althoefer, T. Nanayakkara, Stiffness Control of Soft Robotic Manipulator for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) Using Scale Jamming, In book: Intelligent Robotics and Applications, pp 141-151, 2015; DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-22873-0_52

H. A. Würdemann, S. Sareh, A Shafti, Y. Noh, A. Faragasso, H. Liu, S. Hirai, K. Althoefer, Embedded electro-conductive yarn for shape sensing of soft robotic manipulators, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC 2015), pp.8026 – 8029, 2015; DOI: 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7320255.

A. Shafti, F. Andorno, N. Marchese, S. Arolfo, A. Aydin, O. Elhage, Y. Noh, H. A. Würdemann, A. Arezzo, P. Dasgupta, K. Althoefer, Comfort and Learnability Assessment of a New Soft Robotic Manipulator for Minimally Invasive Surgery, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC 2015) pp.4861 – 4864, 2015; DOI: 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319482.

S. Sareh, Y. Noh, T. Ranzani, H.A. Wurdemann, H. Liu, K. Althoefer, A 7.5mm Steiner chain fiber-optic system for multi-segment flex sensing, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2015), pp.2336 – 2341, 2015; DOI: 10.1109/IROS.2015.7353692.

Awards

Manipulator with contact force and shape sensors for minimally invasive surgery

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Project last modified 10/09/2021

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