11 accepted papers
Continuum robots exhibit exceptional flexibility and multi-degree-of-freedom maneuverability, offering significant advantages for navigating confined luminal spaces. However, rapid simulation of their contact-influenced behavior remains challenging. This paper presents RLFEM, an innovative finite el
Continuum robots offer high flexibility and multiple degrees of freedom, making them ideal for navigating narrow lumens. However, accurately modeling their behavior under large deformations and frequent environmental contacts remains challenging. Current methods for solving the deformation of these
Motion planning for Continuum Surgical Robots (CSRs) faces significant challenges during minimally invasive surgery (MIS) when operating within highly constrained anatomical workspaces. Although traditional approaches aim to prevent tissue damage by finding collision-free paths, robot-tissue interac
The absolute positioning accuracy of industrial robots is significant in modern manufacturing scenarios. Mainstream approaches mostly focus on calibrating kinematic and joint compliance models to compensate for position errors. However, previous elasto-geometrical calibrations typically employ a pri
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) endoscopic catheters provide efficient solutions for the non-invasive scan of malignant tissues in internal human organs. In this letter, we investigate the image-guided control of a robotic flexible endoscopic system equipped with an OCT probe for autonomous tissu
Surgical tool segmentation is a challenging and crucial task for computer and robot-assisted surgery. Supervised learning approaches have shown great success for this task. However, they need a large number of paired training data. Based on Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), unpaired image-to-im
Benefiting from the deformability of soft robots, calibration, and force sensing for soft robots are possible using an external vision-based system, instead of embedded mechatronic force sensors. In this letter, we first propose a calibration method to calibrate both the sensor-robot coordinate syst
Catheter-based intervention plays an important role in minimally invasive surgery. For the closed-loop control of catheter robot through contacts, the loss of contact sensing along the entire catheter might result in task failure. To deal with this problem, we propose a decoupled motion control stra
In this letter, we propose a new framework of external force sensing for soft robots based on the fusion of vision-based measurements and finite element model (FEM) techniques. A precise mechanical model of the robot is built using real-time FEM to describe the relationship between the external forc
In this paper, we propose a strategy for the control of soft robots with visual tracking and simulation-based predictor. A kinematic model of soft robots is obtained thanks to the Finite Element Method (FEM) computed in real-time. The FEM allows to obtain a prediction of the Jacobian matrix of the r…
This paper aims at providing a novel approach to modeling and controlling soft robots. Based on real-time Finite Element Method (FEM), we obtain a globally defined discrete-time kinematic model in the workspace of soft robots. From the kinematic equations, we deduce the soft-robot Jacobian matrix an…