Fuzzy Approximation-Based Task-Space Control of Robot Manipulators With Remote Center of Motion Constraint

The presence of unknown physical interaction between the patients’ body and surgical tool in laparoscopic surgery requires a secure end-effector positioning while assuring a reliable constraint motion. In this work, a task-space control approach based on fuzzy approximation is proposed for a teleoperated surgery scenario utilizing a serial redundant robot manipulator (7 degrees of freedom), the motions of which are constrained with respect to a point known as remote center of motion (RCM). The dynamical uncertainties due to the physical interaction are considered and estimated to maintain operational accuracy by introducing the decoupled adaptive fuzzy approximation technique. Experiments verify the presented approach’s effectiveness. Results indicate that with the proposed control method, the accuracy of the surgical operation is improved while the safety can be ensured for teleoperated surgery with RCM constraint.