A Robotic System with Robust Remote Center of Motion Constraint for Endometrial Regeneration Surgery

Abstract

Surgical robots have been widely used in different procedures to improve and facilitate the surgery. However, there is no robot designed for endometrial regeneration surgery, which is a new therapy for restoring fertility in women using stem cells. Endometrial regeneration surgery requires processing of the endometrium and transplantation of stem cells with minimal trauma to the uterus. In this paper, we introduce a surgical robotic system that consists of a dexterous hysteroscope, supporting arm, and additional novel instruments to facilitate the operation and decrease trauma to the uterus. Remote center of motion (RCM) constraint is required to protect the cervix of the uterus. First, the supporting arm and hysteroscope are controlled separately in kinematics to ensure that the RCM constraint and hysteroscope’s shape and posture are predictable. Then, a task-decoupled method is used to improve the robustness of the RCM constraint. Experiments confirm that the proposed method is more robust and achieves higher RCM accuracy. In addition, the master-slave control of a robot with RCM constraint is also verified. This study proposes the realization of a robot with robust RCM control for endometrial regeneration surgery.