Intuitive Teleoperation Control for Flexible Robotic Endoscopes Under Unkonwn Environmental Interferences

Teleoperation control has been taken a pivotal role in robot-assisted surgical interventions. Unlike hand-eye coordination employed in the conventional laparoscopic systems, the eye-head coordination challenge arises with flexible robotic endoscopes, necessitating a distinct intuitive decision-making approach. In this paper, we introduce an intuitive teleoperation control scheme to address the eye-head coordination intricacies inherent in continuum endoscopic robots. The method achieves field of view (FOV) control consistent with surgeons' intuition for the robots based on the modelling of a virtual workspace (VW). By leveraging accurate shape feedback from embedded multi-core fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), an observer-based anti-interference algorithm is implemented allowing a stable line of sight for robust motion control, even in challenging operational conditions with unknown disturbances. A class of robotic flexible endoscopes commonly used is analyzed specifically and deployed to validate the proposed approach. The efficacy and superiority of the proposed algorithm have been demonstrated through experimental results performed on a urology robotic system, encompassing trajectory tracking and disturbance resistance tasks.