Passivity-based control of underactuated surgical robots

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• Enrico Franco, Imperial College London
• Thursday 30 May 2024, 14:00-15:00
• 909b.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Giordano Scarciotti.

Abstract: Soft robots are underactuated systems ideally suited for minimally invasive surgery because of their compliance and inherent safety. Similarly, robotic systems for percutaneous interventions that employ slender needles can be viewed as underactuated systems. In both cases, underactuation further complicates the control problem, which is already challenging due to the uncertainties characterizing the surgical environment and to the stringent safety requirements. Passivity-based control methodologies represent a promising approach for underactuated systems, since they do not employ high gains thus allowing to preserve the compliance of these systems in closed-loop. This talk will present recent developments in passivity-based control of underactuated systems that account for the effect of the actuator dynamics and for different classes of disturbances. The second part of the talk will illustrate experimental applications to soft robotics and to needle insertion.

Biography: Enrico Franco received the MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and a Ph.D. degree from Imperial College London in 2015. He has been a Research Associate in the Mechatronics in Medicine Lab from 2016 to 2023. He is now a lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department, Hamlyn Centre Division, where he leads the team “Soft robotics and applied control”. His research investigates the fundamental aspects of design and control of soft robotic systems for healthcare applications, including endoluminal diagnosis and surgery. This includes the study of analytical model-based control methods in conjunction with affordable hardware, with the aim to make soft robotic technologies accessible in low-resource settings. A further area of activity is the model-based control of underactuated mechanical systems applied to percutaneous interventions.

This talk is part of the Control and Power Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• 909b
• Andrea Picciau's list
• Control and Power Seminars

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