Collaborative Control for Surgical Robots

We are designing and evaluating control strategies that enable surgeons to intuitively hand-guide an endoscope attached to a redundant lightweight robot. The strategies focus on safety aspects as well as intuitive and smooth control for moving the endoscope. Two scenarios are addressed. The first being a compliant hand-guidance of the endoscope and the second moving the robot’s elbow on its redundancy circle to move the robot out of the surgeon’s way without changing the view. To prevent collisions with the patient and the environment, the robot needs to move respecting Cartesian constraints.