17 accepted papers
The prevailing and most effective approach to teleoperate a robotic arm involves a direct position-to-position mapping, imposing robotic end-effector movements that mirrors those of the user, Fig. 1-top. However, due to this one-to-one mapping, the robot's motions are limited by the user's capabilit
This article presents an interactive control approach allowing a human user to teleoperate a robotic manipulator located nearby. With this approach, the user keeps his/her hands free, as only head movements are exploited to control the robot. The controller maps the 6 Degrees of Freedom (DoF) user's
Precise pedicle screw placement is imperative for a range of spinal procedures demanding exact geometric alignment while also carrying inherent risks. The literature reports a complication rate in the case of screw mispositioning of up to 18%. To increase the accuracy of pedicle screw placement, we
One of the major functions brought by robots in Minimally Invasive Surgery is endoscope holding. This consists, for the user, in placing the camera at a desired location which the robot will maintain still once he/she releases it. This behavior is usually achieved with rigid position servoing, leadi…
This work investigates how arm swing movements measured by Inertial Motion Unit (IMU) sensors can be used to identify and maintain the walking state in a self-balanced lower-limb exoskeleton for medical use. When an exoskeleton is in a dynamical state during gait, short patterns in IMU signals (e.g.…
When the arm prosthesis worn by an amputated Human being is not adequately configured with respect to the end-effector task, body compensations are often observed. Namely, to compensate for a wrong joint positioning on the robotic distal side, a subject trying to reach a desired position/orientation…
Many human-robot collaboration scenarios can be seen as a redundant leader-follower setup where the human (i.e., the leader) can potentially perform the task without the assistance of the robot (i.e., the follower). Thus, the goal of the collaboration, beside stable execution of the task, is to redu…
Beyond the ultimate goal of prosthetics, repairing all the capabilities of amputees, the development line of upper-limb prostheses control mainly relies on three aspects: the robustness, the intuitiveness and the reduction of mental fatigue. Many complex structures and algorithms are proposed but no…
Surgery may involve precise instrument tip positioning in a minimally invasive way. During these operations, the instrument is inserted in the body through an orifice. The movements of the instrument are constrained by interaction forces arising at the orifice level. The physical constraints may dra…
Accurate endoscope localization is a key element for Computer-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery (CALS). External localizers track the endoscope pose and reconstruct the camera geometry through a calibration matrix. Perspective-n-Points (PnP) methods estimate this matrix from a set of paired point coordi…
A laparoscope is a key element in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) as it provides visual feedback to the surgeon. To overcome the drawbacks induced by its manual operation by a human assistant, it can be fixed on the end-effector of a robotic assistant teleoperated by the surgeon: laparoscope displa…
Surgeons performing laparoscopic surgery experience distortion when perceiving the stiffness of a patient's tissues. This is due to the lever effect induced by the introduction of instruments in their patient's body through a fulcrum. To address this problem, we propose to use the comanipulation par…
In robotic minimally invasive surgery, the incision point acts as a fulcrum around which the surgical instrument pivots. The fulcrum point has been the topic of much research. Mechanisms have been invented to enforce instrument motion about such a fulcrum. Other systems establish a fulcrum through c
In this paper, a control solution featuring an energetic constraint is developed to improve the safety of a robotic manipulator sharing its workspace with humans. This general control structure, exploits a generic safe controller that ensures the respect of multiple constraints thanks to a Linear Qu…
Assist-as-needed control aims at maximizing stroke survivors involvement during robotic-led therapies of neurorehabilitation. Besides the specific characteristics of the designed adaptive control strategy, a fundamental property of this control architecture is the choice of the error signal which wi…
In endoscopic surgery, trocars impose kinematic constraints. Whenever a robot manipulates endoscopic instruments, it needs to know the trocar location with respect to its base frame. In the literature, this knowledge is acquired thanks to an installation / registration procedure, prior to the operat
Localizing a bone hidden behind soft tissue is crucial in biomechanics. A typical approach consists in placing markers on the skin, measuring their position/orientation, and from these measurements, estimating the position and orientation of the bone hidden behind the skin while compensating of soft…