Robotic Arm Path Planning Around Surgical No-Fly Zones
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing surgical robots face challenges in planning complex paths for autonomous procedures, particularly in navigating around no-fly zones and avoiding obstacles within a patient's anatomy during surgical tasks like bone cutting or drilling, without colliding with bony anatomy, screw towers, or soft tissues.
Innovation Solution
A method and device for path planning that maps work volumes and no-fly zones, incorporating information from navigation systems and instruments to calculate void volumes and update work volumes, using artificial intelligence to assign weights to parameters for optimal path calculation, ensuring the robotic arm avoids obstacles and follows a safe path.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the robotic arm follows a direct path to the target anatomical element, then the surgical procedure efficiency is improved, but the risk of collision with no-fly zones and obstacles increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary path planning by mapping the work volume and identifying no-fly zones before the robotic arm executes the surgical procedure. The path is calculated in advance to avoid obstacles, ensuring both efficiency and safety without requiring real-time deviations during execution.
Solution Approach 2:
The path planning system acts as an intermediary between the direct path requirement and the obstacle avoidance need. It calculates an optimized path that indirectly navigates around no-fly zones while still achieving the target anatomical element, mediating between speed and safety requirements.
2Reliability
If the work volume is restricted to avoid no-fly zones, then patient safety is improved, but the robotic arm's access flexibility to target elements is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system resolves the conflict between safety restrictions and access flexibility by utilizing three-dimensional path planning. The robotic arm can access target elements from multiple angular dimensions while maintaining distance from no-fly zones, transforming a two-dimensional restriction problem into a three-dimensional solution space.
3Measurement precision
If real-time path recalculation is performed to account for instrument positions, then path accuracy is improved, but the computational complexity and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback by continuously monitoring instrument positions and recalculating the robotic arm's path in real-time. This closed-loop control ensures path accuracy while managing computational complexity through efficient update algorithms that only recalculate necessary path segments when instrument positions change.
Data Source
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AI summary
Systems, methods, and devices for planning a path are provided. A work volume and one or more no-fly zones may be mapped. The work volume may define a volume in which a robot may access and each of the one or more no-fly zones may define at least one volume in which a robot is restricted from accessing. Information may be received about a position of at least one instrument and a void volume may be calculated based on the position of the at least one instrument. The work volume may be updated to include the void volume to yield an updated work volume. A path may be calculated for a robotic arm of a robot from outside a patient anatomy to within the patient anatomy that is within the updated work volume and avoids the one or more no-fly zones.