Visual Servo Control of a Conceptual Magnetically Anchored and Guided Flexible Endoscope

This paper presents a conceptual magnetically anchored and guided flexible endoscope for minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Leveraging both the magnetic coupling between the external and internal permanent magnets and the bending of a flexible joint, the endoscope offers improved maneuver-ability and adaptability within confined surgical spaces. The visual servo control allows the endoscope to autonomously track surgical instruments during procedures, thereby reducing the risk of human error and operator fatigue. First, the design and working principles of the endoscope are introduced. Subsequently, the kinematic modeling of the endoscope is derived, and the control scheme is developed based on a quadratic programming (QP) framework by taking into account both magnetically anchoring constraints and physical constraints, where the joint velocities can be resolved given the desired task velocities in a one-step way. Simulative validations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the visual servo control for the presented endoscope tracking a static/dynamic target with physical constraints considered.