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Viscoelastic model based bilateral teleoperation for robotic-assisted tele-palpation

Jing Guo (Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore)
Ping Li (Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore)
Huaicheng Yan (Key Laboratory of Advanced Control and Optimization for Chemical Process of Ministry of Education, School of Information Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China)
Hongliang Ren (Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore)

Assembly Automation

ISSN: 0144-5154

Article publication date: 7 August 2017

234

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to design a model-based bilateral teleoperation method to improve the feedback force and velocity/position tracking for robotic-assisted tasks (such as palpation, etc.) under constant and/or varying time delay with environment dynamic property. Time delay existing in bilateral teleoperation easily destabilizes the system. Proper control strategies are able to make the system stable, but at the cost of compromised performance. Model-based bilateral teleoperation is designed to achieve enhanced performance of this time-delayed system, but an accurate model is required.

Design/methodology/approach

Viscoelastic model has been used to describe the robot tool-soft tissue interaction behavior. Kevin-Boltzmann (K-B) model is selected to model the soft tissue behavior due to its good accuracy, transient and linearity properties among several viscoelastic models. In this work, the K-B model is designed at the master side to generate a virtual environment of remote robotic tool-soft tissue interaction. In order to obtain improved performance, a self perturbing recursive least square (SPRLS) algorithm is developed to on-line update the necessary parameters of the environment with varying dynamics.

Findings

With fast and optimal on-line estimation of primary parameters of the K-B model, the reflected force of the model-based bilateral teleoperation at the master side is improved as well as the position/velocity tracking performance. This model-based design in the bilateral teleoperation avoids the stability issue caused by time delay in the communication channel since the exchanged information become position/velocity and estimated parameters of the used model. Even facing with big and varying time delay, the system keeps stably and enhanced tracking performance. Besides, the fast convergence of the SPRLS algorithm helps to track the time-varying dynamic of the environment, which satisfies the surgical applications as the soft tissue properties usually are not static.

Originality/value

The originality of this work lies in that an enhanced perception of bilateral teleoperation structure under constant/varying time delay that benefits robotic assisted tele-palpation (time varying environment dynamic) tasks is developed. With SPRLS algorithm to on-line estimate the main parameters of environment, the feedback perception of system can be enhanced with stable velocity/position tracking. The superior velocity/position and force tracking performance of the developed method makes it possible for future robotic-assisted tasks with long-distance communication.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Singapore Academic Research Fund under Grant R-397-000-166-112 and NMRC Bedside & Bench under grant R-397-000-245-511 awarded to Dr Hongliang Ren.

Citation

Guo, J., Li, P., Yan, H. and Ren, H. (2017), "Viscoelastic model based bilateral teleoperation for robotic-assisted tele-palpation", Assembly Automation, Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 322-334. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-12-2016-163

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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