Design of a Mechatronic Interface with Compliant Manipulator for Robot Assisted Echocardiography

Abstract A compliant manipulator with a compound soft actuator is proposed for robot-assisted echocardiography. The target application is devoted to the TOE echo (Trans-oesophageal echocardiography), which is conventionally performed by medical practitioners. The manual manipulation of the echocardiography probe shows significant risks such as human errors, exposure to ionizing radiation, and multitasking complexity. Automation of TOE provides advantages in terms of control, safety, and workload of the operator. This paper proposes a teleoperated robotic system assisting the physician to perform TOE, to be used in cardiac catheterization laboratories as well as hybrid operation theatres. A system containing a holder with master-slave Dynamixel servos and a manipulator with soft actuators has been developed. To alleviate the major lack of the previous designs in conducting the insertion tube, a robotic arm with a soft structure is proposed that has not hazards of conventional robot manipulators. The fundamental equations and relations for quasi-static control of the system are developed in this paper.