Robot-assisted catheter insertion using hybrid impedance control

Angioplasty is a minimally invasive procedure wherein a catheter (a thermoplastic hollow wire) is inserted into the femoral artery and guided till it reaches a blockage in the blood vessel. There could be some potential complications arising from the conventional way of performing angioplasty, e.g., damage to the blood vessel due to excessive force of insertion and exposure of clinicians to harmful radiations and/or high levels of noise from an MRI machine. In this paper, we investigate the use of a robot manipulator (Mitsubishi PA 10-7C) to aid in the insertion of a catheter into a blood vessel. The robot controls the insertion force while the surgeon can remotely operate the robot from a safe and comfortable environment. The paper describes a hybrid impedance control scheme implemented on the Mitsubishi robot to perform simultaneous force/position control. The robot is used in experiments to insert a catheter into a test-bed by controlling the force of insertion and preventing the catheter from buckling or "bunching up". Experimental results for the insertion algorithms are shown