Design and control of a bilateral motion-scaling system using magnetic levitation

• Main Author: Yan, Joseph
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/5016

Microsurgery is an ideal field to utilize the advantages of robotic technology because the tasks involve tool positioning and force sensing capabilities beyond the normal range of human abilities. A robotic manipulator that can reliably extend the surgeon’s manipulation ability by scaling down hand motions and scaling up tool forces would be extremely useful in facilitating microsurgery and alleviating the physical and psychological stress many microsurgeons face in their work. The work described involves the development of a prototype bilateral teleoperation system for experiments in microsurgery. A dual-stage approach is proposed in which two magnetically levitated wrists (a macro-master and a micro-slave) would share a common base positioned at the surgical site by a coarse-motion transport robot. The system hard ware is described in the first part of the thesis including a discussion on the proposed features and the issues in the slave wrist design. In the second part, aspects of coordi nation and control both at the coarse-positioning stage and the fine-motion scaling level are presented. More specifically, an H-based approach to controller design permitting a convenient means to find a compromise between performance and robustness is presented and then experimentally demonstrated.