Robust High Fidelity Needle Insertion in Soft Tissues Implemented on a Teleoperation System

Robot-assisted needle insertion has attracted considerable attention in recent years, due to its application in minimally invasive percutaneous procedures. The main goal of teleoperated needle insertion is accurate tracking of needle in free motion and during insertion. In this research a 1-DOF master/slave needle insertion is introduced. The uncertain dynamics of the slave robot has been considered through the teleoperation loop. An impedance controller has been used for master side and a sliding-mode-based impedance controller is proposed for the slave robot to compensate its uncertain dynamics. Robust control architecture was used to optimize the fidelity measure with constraints on the free motion tracking requirements and robust stability of the system under uncertainties of the soft environment. The validity of the proposed control scheme is demonstrated by experiments with a teleoperation needle insertion set-up. Experimental results indicated effectiveness of this controller to achieve precise tracking during contact and free motion.