Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268

In this paper, we describe the state of the art in continuum robot manipulators and systems intended for application to interventional medicine. Inspired by biological trunks, tentacles, and snakes, continuum robot designs can traverse confined spaces, manipulate objects in complex environments, and conform to curvilinear paths in space. In addition, many designs offer inherent structural compliance and ease of miniaturization. After decades of pioneering research, a host of designs have now been investigated and have demonstrated capabilities beyond the scope of conventional rigid-link robots. Recently, we have seen increasing efforts aimed at leveraging these qualities to improve the frontiers of minimally invasive surgical interventions. Several concepts have now been commercialized, which are inspiring and enabling a current paradigm shift in surgical approaches toward flexible access routes, e.g., through natural orifices such as the nose. In this paper, we provide an overview of the current state of this field from the perspectives of both robotics science and medical applications. We discuss relevant research in design, modeling, control, and sensing for continuum manipulators, and we highlight how this work is being used to build robotic systems for specific surgical procedures. We provide perspective for the future by discussing current limitations, open questions, and challenges.

Continuum Robots for Medical Applications: A Survey

Small-scale soft continuum robots capable of active steering and navigation in a remotely controllable manner hold great promise in diverse areas, particularly in medical applications. Existing continuum robots, however, are often limited to millimeter or centimeter scales due to miniaturization challenges inherent in conventional actuation mechanisms, such as pulling mechanical wires, inflating pneumatic or hydraulic chambers, or embedding rigid magnets for manipulation. In addition, the friction experienced by the continuum robots during navigation poses another challenge for their applications. Here, we present a submillimeter-scale, self-lubricating soft continuum robot with omnidirectional steering and navigating capabilities based on magnetic actuation, which are enabled by programming ferromagnetic domains in its soft body while growing hydrogel skin on its surface. The robot's body, composed of a homogeneous continuum of a soft polymer matrix with uniformly dispersed ferromagnetic microparticles, can be miniaturized below a few hundreds of micrometers in diameter, and the hydrogel skin reduces the friction by more than 10 times. We demonstrate the capability of navigating through complex and constrained environments, such as a tortuous cerebrovascular phantom with multiple aneurysms. We further demonstrate additional functionalities, such as steerable laser delivery through a functional core incorporated in the robot's body. Given their compact, self-contained actuation and intuitive manipulation, our ferromagnetic soft continuum robots may open avenues to minimally invasive robotic surgery for previously inaccessible lesions, thereby addressing challenges and unmet needs in healthcare.

Ferromagnetic soft continuum robots

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) におけるフルードパワー技術の研究動向

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jsprs1975/37/6/37_6_39/_pdf

1998 IEEE International Conference on SMCに参加して

Human fingers are easy to be injured. A CPM machine is a mechanism based on the rehabilitation theory of continuous passive motion (CPM). To develop a CPM machine for the clinic application in the rehabilitation of injured fingers is a significant task. Therefore, based on the theories of evidence based medicine (EBM) and CPM, we've developed a set of biomimetic mechanism after modeling the motions of fingers and analyzing its kinematics and dynamics analysis. We also design an embedded operating system based on ARM (a kind of 32-bit RISC microprocessor). The equipment can achieve the precise control of moving scope of fingers, finger's force and speed. It can serves as a rational checking method and a way of assessment for functional rehabilitation of human hands. Now, the first prototype has been finished and will start the clinical testing in Harbin Medical University shortly

Development of a CPM Machine for Injured Fingers

Robotic grasping is essential for intelligent manufacturing. This article presents a novel anchor-free grasp detector based on fully convolutional network for detecting multiple valid grasps from RGB-D images in real time. Grasp detection is formulated as a closest horizontal or vertical rectangle regression task and a grasp angle classification task. By directing predicting grasps at feature points, our method eliminates the predefined anchors that commonly used in prior methods, and thus anchor-related hyperparameters and complex computations are avoided. For suppressing ambiguous and low-quality training samples, a new sample assignment strategy that combines center-sampling and regression weights is proposed. Our method achieves a state-of-the-art accuracy of 99.4% on Cornell and 96.2% on Jacquard dataset, and real-time speed of 104 frames per second, with approximately 2× fewer parameters and 8× less training time compared to previous one-stage detector. Moreover, an efficient multiscale feature fusion module is integrated to improve the performance of multigrasp detection by 25%. In real-world robotic grasping of novel objects, our method achieves a grasp success rate of 91.3% for single object and 83.3% for multiple objects with only 26 ms used for the whole planning. The results demonstrate that our method is robust for potential industrial applications.

Real-Time Robotic Multigrasp Detection Using Anchor-Free Fully Convolutional Grasp Detector

The invention relates to a biped robot lower limb mechanism, in particular to a biped robot lower limb mechanism driven hydraulically The problems that an existing electrically-driven robot is small in loading capacity, low in specific power and poor in anti-interference performance are solved The biped robot lower limb mechanism comprises a body, an oil distributor, a left leg and a right leg, the oil distributor is arranged on the upper surface of the body, the left leg and the right leg are arranged on the lower surface of the body side by side, and are of the same structure, and the left leg comprises a foot, a shank, a thigh, a hip joint forward swing hydraulic cylinder servo unit, a hip joint twisting hydraulic cylinder servo unit, a hip joint, a knee joint forward swing hydraulic cylinder servo unit, an ankle joint, two ankle joint hydraulic cylinder servo units, a hip joint side swing hydraulic cylinder servo unit and a body upper end swing connecting piece The biped robot lower limb mechanism belongs to the field of robots

Biped robot lower limb mechanism driven hydraulically

The objective of this study is to provide catheterization with a three-dimensional (3D) guiding image and reduce the collision probability between the catheter tip and vascular wall. A bidirectional steerable catheter was integrated with two magnetic position-tracking sensors on both sides of its bending segment. The tracking information was displayed on the guiding image, which helped the surgeons to determine the relative position between the catheter tip and surrounding vessels. The navigation path was generated on the basis of the vascular skeleton. Moreover, along the path, a series of guiding circular planes were set as the guidance for the catheter. Three operations (bending, advancing, and twisting) were jointly conducted to get the catheter through these guiding planes in turn and eventually into the target vessel. The effectiveness of the proposed navigation method was verified by experiments implemented in an aorta vascular phantom. The navigation system has a mean error of 0.19 mm, a r...

An in vitro investigation of image-guided steerable catheter navigation.

In this paper, a micro bending robot (MBR) for an active catheter which allows any bending direction and bending angle and has a simple structure for miniaturization was developed. The MBR is 1.25 mm in outer diameter. In order to achieve a large bending angle meanwhile not to increase the outer diameter of the MBR too much, the MBR consists of 3 bending units. A bending unit consists of a bias spring and 3 incorporating shape memory alloy (SMA) coil actuators. The bending model of a bending unit was established based on a design chart and equation. Kinematics of a bending unit was analysed, and the position and orientation of the tip center and the displacements of all 3 SMA coil actuators of the bending unit in any bending direction and bending angle were obtained. Finally, the position and orientation of the tip center of the MBR and its bending angle in any bending direction were deduced. The works of this paper help to consummate the design theory of active catheter and has important theoretic significance and practical applied value.

Yili Fu

Papers

Development of a CPM Machine for Injured Fingers

Real-Time Robotic Multigrasp Detection Using Anchor-Free Fully Convolutional Grasp Detector

Biped robot lower limb mechanism driven hydraulically

An in vitro investigation of image-guided steerable catheter navigation.

Kinematics of Micro Bending Robot Using Shape Memory Alloy for Active Catheter