Related papers: Toward Extending Concentric Tube Robot Kinematics …
As surgical interventions trend towards minimally invasive approaches, Concentric Tube Robots (CTRs) have been explored for various interventions such as brain, eye, fetoscopic, lung, cardiac and prostate surgeries. Arranged concentrically,…
Concentric Tube Robots (CTRs) have garnered significant interest within the surgical robotics community because of their flexibility, dexterity, and ease of miniaturization. However, mastering the unique kinematics and design principles of…
Tendon-actuated concentric tube mechanisms combine the advantages of tendon-driven continuum robots and concentric tube robots while addressing their respective limitations. They overcome the restricted degrees of freedom often seen in…
Concentric Tube Robots (CTR) have the potential to enable effective minimally invasive surgeries. While extensive modeling and control schemes have been proposed in the past decade, limited efforts have been made to improve the trajectory…
Tendon-driven Continuum Robots (TDCRs) are promising candidates for applications in confined spaces due to their unique shape, compliance, and miniaturization capability. Non-parallel tendon routing for TDCRs have shown definite advantages…
Tendon-driven continuum robots (TDCRs), with their flexible backbones, offer the advantage of being used for navigating complex, cluttered environments. However, to do so, they typically require multiple segments, often leading to complex…
Concentric tube continuum robots utilize nested tubes, which are subject to a set of inequalities. Current approaches to account for inequalities rely on branching methods such as if-else statements. It can introduce discontinuities, may…
Isoperimetric robotic trusses can adapt to different tasks and environments because they have a high strength-to-weight ratio, can change their own shape dramatically, and can be reconfigured into a variety of different shapes. However,…
As soft continuum manipulators characterize terrific compliance and maneuverability in narrow unstructured space, low stiffness and limited dexterity are two obvious shortcomings in practical applications. To address the issues, a novel…
Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots (TDCRs) have the potential to be used in minimally invasive surgery and industrial inspection, where the robot must enter narrow and confined spaces. We propose a Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach to…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
Several robotic frameworks have been recently developed to assist ophthalmic surgeons in performing complex vitreoretinal procedures such as subretinal injection of advanced therapeutics. These surgical robots show promising capabilities;…
In this paper, we present the design, fabrication, and evaluation of a novel flexible, yet structurally strong, Concentric Tube Steerable Drilling Robot (CT-SDR) to improve minimally invasive treatment of spinal tumors. Inspired by…
We present a novel general model that unifies the kinematics of constant curvature and constant twist continuum manipulators. Combining this kinematics with energy-based physics, we derive a linear mapping from actuator configuration to…
Endoscopic endonasal approaches (EEA) have become more prevalent for minimally invasive skull base and sinus surgeries. However, rigid scopes and tools significantly decrease the surgeon's ability to operate in tight anatomical spaces and…
Continuum robots (CRs), owing to their compact structure, inherent compliance, and flexible deformation, have been widely applied in various fields. By coordinating multiple CRs to form collaborative continuum robots (CCRs), task…
A hybrid continuum robot design is introduced that combines a proximal tendon-actuated section with a distal telescoping section comprised of permanent-magnet spheres actuated using an external magnet. While, individually, each section can…
Continuum parallel robots (CPR) combine rigid actuation mechanisms with multiple elastic rods in a closed-loop topology, making forward statics challenging when rigid--continuum junctions are enforced by explicit kinematic constraints. Such…
Localization and mapping of an environment are crucial tasks for any robot operating in unstructured environments. Time-of-flight (ToF) sensors (e.g.,~lidar) have proven useful in mobile robotics, where high-resolution sensors can be used…
Follow-the-leader (FTL) motion exploits the unique morphology of continuum robots (CRs) to navigate confined spaces by having the body retrace the path of the tip. While extensively studied, existing FTL methods typically assume a fixed…