Qualitative and quantitative assessment of admittance controllers for hand-guiding surgical robots

Abstract When using redundant medical robots for hand-guiding heavy endoscopic tools, admittance control allows a completely defined tool and robot null space motion control. Although not novel concept, comparative studies that help to design implement are missing. In user study, we compared four controllers: one zero-torque controller used measured joint torques three others differently mapping forces/torques at the handle tip velocity. We found two of controllers ( Dynamic Mass Integrated ) outperformed others.