Design of Vascular Interventional Surgical Robot with Network Time Delay Analysis for Master-slave Teleoperation

Intravascular catheterization is a vital task performed by surgeons during interventional treatment of vascular diseases. The procedure is reliant on achieving a precise and safe manipulation of endovascular tools from the entry port to the target location within the patient vasculature. However, during such procedures inefficient proximal-to-distal transmissions could occur due to imprecise motion control, communication delay as well as the application of an excessive force. Thus achieving a precise control of endovascular tools during procedures remain an active research area. This study proposes a master-slave interventional (MSI) robot prototype for precise control of guide wire axial and rotational motion within the vasculature. The mechanism of the MSI robot mimics the natural operating process of a surgeon and therefore requires little learning cost. And the system’s force feedback module improves the robot’s transparency. Furthermore, a multi-connection time-delay control approach is proposed to minimize communication delay and improve the stability of the MSI robot. The developed prototype was utilized for in-vivo experiments with the experimental outcome demonstrating its versatility for vascular intervention.