DEVELOPMENT OF CONTROL STRATEGY FOR FORCE CONTROL IN IN-VIVO ROBOT

Abstract

The growth of medical since the mid-1980 has been striking. Medical robotics is ultimately an application-driven research field. Robotic surgery is in its infancy. Many obstacles and disadvantages will be resolved in time and no doubt many other questions will rise. Many of current advantage in robotics assisted surgery ensure its continued development and expansion.One of the robotic surgeries is endoscopes. Eendoscopy have been in use for many procedures including limited surgery. A very commonapplication of endoscopes have been used in surgery is biopsy. However present Endoscopes has certainIimitations such as restricted degrees of motion of tool leading to poor manipulation of tissues, limitedvisualization of surgical field, increased sensitivity to hand movement etc. The robots used for surgery where the entire robot is placed inside the body arecalled as In Vivo Robot In this thesis robotic arm is developed which will be fitted at the endoscopic tube. Endoscopic tube will be stationed at the end of the esophagus and robotic arm will be anchored in the leading face of the tube. The robotic arm will be actuated by servomotors kept outside the body through wires. The proposed robotic arm shall provide distinctly more degree of freedom and better manoeuvrability inside the stomach with respect to that ofcurrently used biopsy tool. This will also enable the surgeon to access much greater area inside thestomach. The view of operating zone is improved by integrating vision system to the multiplearms of the manipulator.During movement inside the stomach robotic arm may damage healthy tissues. To avoid this, force control strategy is developed.Flexi-force sensor is used to control force. For the above mentioned study robotic arm and its environment models are developed in PRO-E.Working 4-X model is developed. Total 7 DC motors are used to generate required motion. ARDUINO-ADK microcontroller is used to control various motions.