Two-dimensional Trajectory Tracking of a Magnetic Continuum Robot by Optimal Magnet Manipulation
Lijun Hao, Tangwen Yang, Jiamiao Gong, Sheng Liu, Zhe Zheng
Abstract
The steerability of catheter is critical to the success of interventional procedure. In this paper, a magnetic continuum robot is presumably mounted to the distal of a catheter to pull it in the narrow, bifurcate, tortuous pathways of the blood vessels. The continuum robot is actuated by a permanent magnet. It is linear and soft, which complicates its interaction with the magnet. However, it generates the omnidirectional deflection at its tip and improves its steerability instead. In the non-uniform field generated by a permanent magnet, besides magnetic torque, magnetic force is acting on the robot as well, and both are used to derive the dynamic equations to govern the interaction between the robot and the magnet, in terms of the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. An iterative algorithm to calculate the magnet pose is proposed to generate an optimal moving magnetic field and actuate the robot to follow the planned trajectory at its tip. A robot prototype is fabricated, and the experimental results show that this prototype can accurately track the planned trajectories in 2D space by the magnet manipulation with a robot arm.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2025_twodimensionaltr,
title = {Two-dimensional Trajectory Tracking of a Magnetic Continuum Robot by Optimal Magnet Manipulation},
author = {Lijun Hao and Tangwen Yang and Jiamiao Gong and Sheng Liu and Zhe Zheng},
booktitle = {IROS 2025},
year = {2025}
}