하준형 교수

Robot control requires the rapid computation of robot shape, which for continuum robots typically involves solving complex mechanics-based models. Furthermore, shape computation based on kinematic input variables can be inaccurate due to parameter errors and model simplification. An alternate approach is to compute the shape in real-time from a set of sensors positioned along the length of the robot that provide measurements of local curvature, e.g., optical fiber Bragg gratings. This paper prop

The shape of a concentric tube robot depends not only on the relative rotations and translations of its constituent tubes, but also on the history of relative tube displacements. Existing mechanics-based models neglect all history-dependent phenomena with the result that when calibrated on experimental data collected over a robot's workspace, the maximum tip position error can exceed 8 mm for a 200-mm-long robot. In this paper, we develop a model that computes the bounding kinematic solutions in

With the current trend of dwindling life cycle of production, necessity of systems with high-adaptability is on the rise. With their high adaptability and easy maintenance, reconfigurable manipulators are strong candidates to replace conventional non-reconfigurable manipulators in such trend. However, most of existing reconfigurable robots are designed for non-industrial use and remained in laboratory level because of their low accuracy and low mechanical/electrical capacity. In this letter, we

In the two-frame sensor calibration problem, the objective is to find rigid-body homogeneous transformation matrices X,Y that best fit a set of equalities of the form A <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">i</sub> X = YB <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">i</sub> , i=1,..., N, where the {(A <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xl

Minimally invasive surgery can involve navigating inside small cavities or reaching around sensitive tissues. Robotic instruments based on concentric tube technology are well suited to these tasks since they are slender and can be designed to take on shapes of high and varying curvature along their length. One limitation of these robots, however, is that elastic instabilities can arise when rotating one pre-curved tube inside another. While prior work has considered tubes of piecewise-constant p

Concentric tube robots, which are comprised of precurved elastic tubes that are concentrically arranged, are being developed for many medical interventions. The shape of the robot is determined by the rotation and translation of the tubes relative to each other, and also by any external forces applied by the environment. As the tubes rotate and translate relative to each other, elastic potential energy caused by tube bending and twisting can accumulate; if a configuration is not locally elastica

Robotic instruments based on concentric tube technology are well suited to minimally invasive surgery since they are slender, can navigate inside small cavities and can reach around sensitive tissues by taking on shapes of varying curvature. Elastic instabilities can arise, however, when rotating one precurved tube inside another. In contrast to prior work that considered only tubes of piecewise constant precurvature, we allow precurvature to vary along the tube's arc length. Stability condition

Soft robots can provide advantages for medical interventions given their low cost and their ability to change shape and safely apply forces to tissue. This article explores the potential for their use for endoscopically-guided balloon dilation procedures in the airways. A scalable robot design based on balloon catheter technology is proposed, which is composed of five balloons together with a tip-mounted camera and LED. Its design parameters are optimized with respect to the clinical requirement

Hand–eye and robot–world calibration is a problem in which the unknown homogeneous transformations <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$X$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Y$</tex-math></inline-formula> must be estimated for a loop closure equation <inline-formula xmlns

The proposed technology overcomes the limitations of existing airway stents and may provide an alternative to maintaining children on a ventilator.

Concentric tube robots experience elastic instability when the potential energy stored in torsional twisting of the tubes is suddenly released. To date, ensuring stability for all possible rotational configurations has involved constraining the precurvatures and/or precurved lengths of the tubes comprising the robot, which results in limitations on robot curvature and workspace. This paper presents a design approach that eliminates the constraints on tube precurvature and length for stable rotat

This paper presents a novel continuum robot sheath for use in single-port minimally invasive procedures such as neuroendoscopy in which the sheath is designed to deliver multiple robotic arms. Articulation of the sheath is achieved by using precurved superelastic tubes lining the working channels used for arm delivery. These tubes perform a similar role to push/pull tendons, but can accomplish shape change of the sheath via rotation as well as translation. A kinematic model using Cosserat rod th

In a graph search algorithm, a given environment is represented as a graph comprising a set of feasible system configurations and their neighboring connections. A path is generated by connecting the initial and goal configurations through graph exploration, whereby the path is often desired to be optimal or suboptimal. The computational performance of the optimal path generation depends on the avoidance of unnecessary explorations. Accordingly, heuristic functions have been widely adopted to gui

Mechanics-based formulations of concentric tube robots incorporate tube bending and twisting, but do not include other phenomena that could model observed hysteretic behavior in which tube configurations reached by rotating tubes in different directions achieve different tip positions. As a step toward incorporating hysteretic tube-on-tube friction, this paper derives a model that enables computation of the contact forces applied by the tubes on each other along their lengths. To do so, it is ne