Comparison of estimation and control methods for flexible needle in 2D

Abstract

The needle puncture technology is one of the simplest minimally invasive medical procedures. Due to the asymmetry of the needle tip, the lateral force exerted by the tissue causes the tip to deflect and reaches the target position. It is important to maintain the needle tip in a desired plane in 2D control. In the process of puncture, the position is measured and the posture of the needle tip needs to be estimated in real time. Three estimation algorithms for estimating the states of the needle tip are employed in this paper. The first algorithm is adaptive Kalman filter (AKF), which is applied to the statistical properties of the noise is not completely known. The second is unscented Kalman filter (UKF). The last one is the combination of AKF and UKF, called adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) which combines the advantages of both. It should be noted that AKF is based on the feedback linearization model, but UKF and AUKF are directly based on the nonlinear model. On the base of analysis of three estimation algorithms, we study the control method. In this work, we estimate the states via the three methods and analyze the results. The simulation results of the estimation algorithms and the control method illustrate the differences between the three algorithms.