Dual-scale robotic solution for middle ear surgery

This paper deals with the control of a redundant robotic system for middle ear surgery (i.e., cholesteatoma tissues removal). The targeted robotic system is a macro-micro-scale robot composed of a redundant seven degrees of freedom (DoFs) on which is attached a two DoFs robotized flexible fiberscope. Two different control architectures are proposed to achieve a defined surgical procedure to remove the pathological tissue inside the middle ear cavity. The first proposed control mode is based on the position-based tele-operation of the entire system using a joystick (Phantom Omni) as a master arm. The second one combines comanipulation of the seven DoFs robotic arm using an embedded force/torque sensor and an end-frame tele-operation of the remaining two DoFs fiberscope using a lab-made in-hand joystick. Experimental validation is performed to evaluate and compare the performance of both developed control schemes. The obtained results using the lab-made platform and the proposed controllers are discussed.