Continuous path controller of slave manipulator in remote ultrasound diagnostic system

A master-slave type remote ultrasound diagnostic system was developed. The controller has impedance control capability for the master and slave manipulators' positions and has a continuous path (CP) control capability for the slave manipulator's orientation. The paper presents the controller of the slave manipulator's orientation. The remote ultrasound diagnostic system is one of remote medical systems through a communication network. Therefore it is difficult to transfer information for control at high sampling rate. To cope with this problem, we introduce a CP controller to this remote medical system. CP control realizes a smooth and less vibrated motion of the slave manipulator even if it is available to use a lower sampling rate of transmitting orientation data of the master manipulator. As a result, it allows the slave manipulator to improve safety and to decrease the volume of transmitting data. The experimental results demonstrate the accuracy of the path control of the slave manipulator during CP control in the master-slave manipulation system. The experimental results also show that a medical doctor can perform diagnosis properly using the developed system.