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Dexterity analysis of a continuum robot with closed-solutions for head and neck oncology

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Abstract

Head and neck surgeries require skilled surgeons to avoid facial nerves and blood vessels. Using straight surgical instruments to create a deep and sealed operating environment is difficult. Continuum robots are particularly effective in head and neck surgery due to their extensive range of motion, adaptability, and ability to navigate confined anatomical spaces. This paper presents a new approach to examine the flexibility of the continuum robot in head and neck surgery, motivated by the advantages of continuum robots. This method uses a discretized kinematics model with a constant curvature and a piecewise assumption-fitting-approximation (PFA) method to find closed solutions for the continuum robot’s problem. We introduced the concept of spatial solid angle to assess the dexterity of the continuum robot, utilizing the inverse solution of the target point position as a reference. An intuitive dexterity index and dexterity area were proposed. The length of the continuum segment was optimized by simulation, and the efficacy of the approach was then validated through experiments. Experiments demonstrate that the piecewise assumption can cause the dual-section continuum robot to deform as expected. In comparison to previous similar tasks, the robot has exceptional position accuracy, with a position error of only \(1.72\%\) of the overall length. Additionally, it exhibits excellent real-time performance, with a maximum time consumption of 3.9 ms.

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Data availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Funding

This work was supported in part by National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFE0206900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No. 62103117) and interdisciplinary Innovation Project Research fund of West China Stomatological Hospital of Sichuan University (Grant No. RD-03-202309).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Dexin Cheng, Zhijiang Du, Haodong Wang & Yongzhuo Gao

  2. The State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Dexin Cheng, Zhijiang Du, Haodong Wang & Yongzhuo Gao

  3. Harbin Sagebot Intelligent Medical Equipment Co., LTD., Harbin, 150001, China

    Wei Dong & Wei Wang

  4. The State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases and National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases and Department of Head and Neck Oncology and West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Chunjie Li

  5. Institute for Control Science, Russian Academy of Sciences, 65, Profsoyuznaya str., Moscow, Russia, 117997

    Pavel Shcherbakov

  6. Department of Urology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430022, China

    Huageng Liang

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  1. Dexin Cheng
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Contributions

YG ,WD and ZD propose research ideas; DC designed research plan and draft the paper; CL and HL provided clinical information and provided guidance and suggestions on the robot structural design; DC and YG are responsible for experimental data analysis and literature research; WW, HW, and PS modified the format of the paper and screened the logic of the paper; YG and DC revised the final version of the paper.

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Correspondence to Yongzhuo Gao.

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Cheng, D., Dong, W., Du, Z. et al. Dexterity analysis of a continuum robot with closed-solutions for head and neck oncology. SIViP 18, 5919–5931 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-024-03281-3

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