Motion and Trajectory Constraints Control Modeling for Flexible Surgical Robotic Systems

Success of the da Vinci surgical robot in the last decade has motivated the development of flexible access robots to assist clinical experts during single-port interventions of core intrabody organs. Prototypes of flexible robots have been proposed to enhance surgical tasks, such as suturing, tumor resection, and radiosurgery in human abdominal areas; nonetheless, precise constraint control models are still needed for flexible pathway navigation. In this paper, the design of a flexible snake-like robot is presented, along with the constraints model that was proposed for kinematics and dynamics control, motion trajectory planning, and obstacle avoidance during motion. Simulation of the robot and implementation of the proposed control models were done in Matlab. Several points on different circular paths were used for evaluation, and the results obtained show the model had a mean kinematic error of 0.37 ± 0.36 mm with very fast kinematics and dynamics resolution times. Furthermore, the robot’s movement was geometrically and parametrically continuous for three different trajectory cases on a circular pathway. In addition, procedures for dynamic constraint and obstacle collision detection were also proposed and validated. In the latter, a collision-avoidance scheme was kept optimal by keeping a safe distance between the robot’s links and obstacles in the workspace. Analyses of the results showed the control system was optimal in determining the necessary joint angles to reach a given target point, and motion profiles with a smooth trajectory was guaranteed, while collision with obstacles were detected a priori and avoided in close to real-time. Furthermore, the complexity and computational effort of the algorithmic models were negligibly small. Thus, the model can be used to enhance the real-time control of flexible robotic systems.