Control architecture of a sensorless robotic platform for minimally invasive surgery

This paper presents a modular robotic platform for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) composed of several miniaturized robotic units anchored to a magnetic frame. The description of the hardware features of the platform is presented, along with a master/slave control architecture to intuitively handle two robotic units. Kinematic coupling between master and slave devices enhances the intuitiveness of the system, making possible to handle it dexterously with two Phantoms Omni devices. In order to evaluate the feasibility of the control scheme, pick and place experiments have been carried out, and the learning curve of the system was determined by performing experimental sessions with 5 users. As the miniature robotic units are not provided with sensors, an initial autocalibration method based on image analysis has been developed in order to avoid joints position errors. The control architecture showed good performance in terms of control speed.