2023/02/11 by Xiangjie Yan, Yan, Xiangjie, Yongpeng Jiang +9 · 2 citations
Engineering · Medicine · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Robotics (cs.RO) #Soft Robotics and Applications #Surgical Simulation and Training #Teleoperation and Haptic Systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2302.05685
openalex publication_date 2023/02/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Ultrasound scanning robots enable the automatic imaging of a patient's internal organs by maintaining close contact between the ultrasound probe and the patient's body during a scanning procedure. Comprehensive, high-quality ultrasound scans are essential for providing the patient with an accurate diagnosis and effective treatment plan. An ultrasound scanning robot usually works in a doctor-robot co-existing environment, hence both efficiency and safety during the collaboration should be considered. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-modal control scheme for ultrasound scanning robots, in which three interaction modes are integrated into a single control input. Specifically, the scanning mode drives the robot to track a time-varying trajectory on the patient's body under the desired impedance model; the recovery mode allows the robot to actively recontact the body whenever physical contact between the ultrasound probe and the patient's body is lost; the human-guided mode renders the robot passive such that the doctor can safely intervene to manually reposition the probe. The integration of multiple modes allows the doctor to intervene safely at any time during the task and also maximizes the robot's autonomous scanning ability. The performance of the robot is validated on a collaborative scanning task of a carotid artery examination.