A Novel Contact Force Measurement Scheme for Slave Catheter Robot in Robotic Endovascular Surgery

In this paper, an intravascular robotic teleoperation system (IRTS) has proposed to reduce the physical stress and xray exposure to surgeons during vascular interventional surgery (VIS), reducing the probability of occupational diseases. The system, through its ergonomic design, allows the surgeon to bring the experience to robot-assisted VIS. For this reason, a master haptic module based on magnetorheological (MR) fluid technology was designed to provide fast and accurate haptic feedback while capturing the surgeon's hand movements (radial and axial direction) in operating the catheter. In the slave side, the catheter manipulator is designed to mimic the surgeon's action at the main end, with a novel grasper designed to provide sufficient clamping force while protecting the catheter surface from damage. At the same time, the contact force between the catheter and the patient's vessels can be measured by the motor current loss-speed-resistance model, which has less impact on surgery and a more accurate way to measure force. Compared with traditional VIS, the IRTS not only achieves the same results, but also reduces the cognitive workload of the operation and further improves the transparency and safety of the VIS.