Experiments on the Simultaneous Hand-Held Control of Rigid Endoscopes and Robots Passing Through Them

Concentric tube manipulators have the diameter of needles and are consequently amenable to delivery into the human body through small ports in an endoscope. When this is done, the surgeon must manipulate both the endoscope and one or more concentric tube robots simultaneously. In this paper we explore a hand-held approach to this user interface challenge, in which the surgeon has direct physical control of endoscope pose and can use finger and thumb controls to specify the motion of two concentric tube robots that pass through the endoscope. In experiments with the system, we explore whether the endoscope-robot combination can reach locations in the prostate that are inaccessible to the endoscope alone. We also compare joint space and task space control for three-degree-of-freedom concentric tube robots, and demonstrate experimentally that laser resection of prostate tissue is possible using an anthropomorphic phantom.