Abstract
Soft continuum robots are highly deformable and manoeuvrable manipulators, capable of navigating through confined space and interacting safely with their surrounding environment, making them ideal for minimally invasive surgical applications. A crucial requirement of a soft robot is to control its overall stiffness efficiently, in order to execute the necessary surgical task in an unstructured environment. This paper presents a comparative study detailing the stiffness characterization of two soft manipulator designs and the formulation of a dynamic stiffness matrix for the purpose of disturbance rejection and stiffness control for precise tip positioning. An empirical approach is used to accurately describe the stiffness characteristics along the length of the manipulator and the derived stiffness matrix is applied in real-time control to reject disturbances. Further, the capability of the two types of soft robots to reject disturbances using the dynamic control technique is tested and compared. The results presented in this paper provide new insights into controlling the stiffness of soft continuum robots for minimally invasive surgical applications.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Simaan, N., Taylor, R., Flint, P.: A dexterous system for laryngeal surgery. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, vol. 1, pp. 351–357, April 2004
Sears, P., Dupont, P.: A steerable needle technology using curved concentric tubes. In: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2850–2856, October 2006
Cianchetti, M., Ranzani, T., Gerboni, G., Nanayakkara, T., Althoefer, K., Dasgupta, P., Menciassi, A.: Soft robotics technologies to address shortcomings in today’s minimally invasive surgery: the STIFF-FLOP approach. Soft Robotics 1(2), 122–131 (2014)
Elsayed, Y., Lekakou, C., Ranazani, T., Cianchetti, M., Morino, M., Chirurgia, M., Arezzo, M., Gao, T., Saaj, C.: Crimped braided sleeves for soft, actuating arm in robotic abdominal surgery. Minimally Invasive Therapy & Allied Technologies (2015). doi:10.3109/13645706.2015.1012083
Stilli, A., Wurdemann, H.A., Althoefer, K.: Shrinkable, stiffness-controllable soft manipulator based on a bio-inspired antagonistic actuation principle. In: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2476-2481, September 14-18, 2014. doi:10.1109/IROS.2014.6942899
Maghooa, F., Agostino, S., Althoefer, K., Wurdemann, H.A.: Tendon and pressure actuation for a bio-inspired manipulator based on an antagonistic principle. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seattle, USA, May 26–30, 2015
Cheng, N.G., Lobovsky, M.B., Keating, S.J., Setapen, A.M., Gero, K.I., Hosoi, A.E., Iagnemma, K.D.: Design and analysis of a robust, low-cost, highly articulated manipulator enabled by jamming of granular media. In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 4328–4333, May 2012
Loeve, A.J., van de Ven, O.S., Vogel, J.G., Breedveld, P., Dankelman, J.: Vacuum packed particles as flexible endoscope guides with controllable rigidity. IGranular Matter 12(6), 543–554 (2010)
Jiang, A., Xynogalas, G., Dasgupta, P., Althoefer, K., Nanayakkara, T.: Design of a variable stiffness flexible manipulator with composite granular jamming and membrane coupling. In: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 2922−2927, October 7-12, 2012
Lee, Y.-T., Choi, H.-R., Chung, W.-K., Youm, Y.: Stiffness control of a coupled tendon-driven robot hand. IEEE Control Systems 14(5), 10–19 (1994). doi:10.1109/37.320882
Mahvash, M., Dupont, P.: Stiffness control of surgical continuum manipulators. IEEE Transactions on Robotics 27(2), 334–345 (2011)
Lekakou, C., Elsayed, Y., Geng, T., Saaj, C.M.: Skins and Sleeves for Soft Robotics: Inspiration from Nature and Architecture. Advanced Engineering Materials (2015). doi:10.1002/adem.201400406
Fraś, J., Czarnowski, J., Maciaś, M., Główka, J., Cianchetti, M., Menciassi, A.: New STIFF-FLOP module construction idea for improved actuation and sensing. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seattle, USA, May 26-30, 2015
Cianchetti, M., Ranzani, T., Gerboni, G., De Falco, I., Laschi, C., Menciassi, A.: STIFF-FLOP surgical manipulator: mechanical design and experimental characterization of the single module. In: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent and Robotic Systems, pp. 3567-3581 (2014)
Carbone, G.: Stiffness analysis for grasping tasks: grasping in robotics. In: Carbone, G., (ed.) Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol. 10, pp. 17–55. Springer, London (2013)
Noh, Y., Secco, E.L., Sareh, S., Wurdemann, H., Faragasso, A., Back, J., Liu, H., Sklar, E., Althoefer, K.: A continuum body force sensor designed for flexible surgical robotic devices. In: 36th Annual International Conference of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), pp. 3711−3714 (2014)
Noh, Y., Sareh, S., Back, J., Wurdemann, H.A., Ranzani, T., Secco, E.L., Faragasso, A., Liu, H., Althoefer, K.: A three-axial body force sensor for flexible manipulators. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 6388−6393 (2014)
Fraś, J., Czarnowski, J., Maciaś, M., Główka, J.: Static Modeling of Multisection Soft Continuum Manipulator for Stiff-Flop project. Springer (2014)
NDI 3D measurement technology systems. http://www.ndigital.com/medical/products/aurora/
Calinon, S., Bruno, D., Malekzadeh, M.S., Nanayakkara, T., Caldwell, D.G.: Human-robot skills transfer interfaces for a flexible surgical robot. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine 116(2), 81–96 (2014)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Mustaza, S.M. et al. (2015). Tuneable Stiffness Design of Soft Continuum Manipulator. In: Liu, H., Kubota, N., Zhu, X., Dillmann, R. (eds) Intelligent Robotics and Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9246. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22873-0_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22873-0_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-22872-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-22873-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)