Adaptive Control of a Master-Slave Based Robotic Surgical System With Haptic Feedback

A master-slave (M-S) based robotic surgical system with haptic feedback is presented in this work for natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) using an in-vivo robot. A novel dual-loop control, including closed-loop inverse kinematics (CLIK) and adaptive control with optimal control parameters, is developed for the slave robot to track a random trajectory upon updating the dynamic parameters of the slave robot. The interaction between the slave robot tip position and environment is controlled by an impedance controller that prevents damage to healthy tissues. Upon tracking a given desired 3D trajectory as input for the slave robot by the human operator handling the master robot, the slave robot-tissue interaction force is sensed as haptic feedback at the master side. Lyapunov direct method based stability analysis and performance evaluations involving both simulation and experimental studies prove the efficacy of our novelly developed M-S robotic system aiming NOTES regulated by the proposed adaptive control strategy with optimized control parameters. Note to Practitioners: The M-S based robotic surgical system is developed to perform NOTES using a cable-driven in-vivo robot attached to the tip of a flexible endoscope. It performs tissue manipulation as per the direction given by the operator. The inclusion of haptic imitates the NOTES performed using the in-vivo robot as conventional surgery. The developed system includes the following aspects: a) The adaptive control scheme with optimal control parameters; b) Interaction force between the slave robot and tissue environment is controlled using impedance control and given as haptic feedback to the surgeon; c) The proposed system can be potentially utilized for actual teleoperated surgery and surgical training for NOTES.