A novel control architecture for physiological tremor compensation in teleoperated systems

Background Telesurgery delivers surgical care to a ‘remote’ patient by means of robotic manipulators. When accurate positioning of the surgeon's tool is required, as in microsurgery, physiological tremor causes unwanted imprecision during a surgical operation. Accurate estimation/compensation of physiological tremor in teleoperation systems has been shown to improve performance during telesurgery. Method A new control architecture is proposed for estimation and compensation of physiological tremor in the presence of communication time delays. This control architecture guarantees stability with satisfactory transparency. In addition, the proposed method can be used for applications that require modifications in transmitted signals through communication channels. Stability of the bilateral tremor‐compensated teleoperation is preserved by extending the bilateral teleoperation to the equivalent trilateral Dual‐master/Single‐slave teleoperation. The bandlimited multiple Fourier linear combiner (BMFLC) algorithm is employed for real‐time estimation of the operator's physiological tremor. Results Two kinds of stability analysis are employed. In the model‐base controller, Llewellyn's Criterion is used to analyze the teleoperation absolute stability. In the second method, a nonmodel‐based controller is proposed and the stability of the time‐delayed teleoperated system is proved by employing a Lyapunov function. Experimental results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the new control architecture. The tremorous motion is measured by accelerometer to be compensated in real time. In addition, a Needle‐Insertion setup is proposed as a slave robot for the application of brachytherapy, in which the needle penetrates in the desired position. The slave performs the desired task in two classes of environments (free motion of the slave and in the soft tissue). Conclusion Experiments show that the proposed control architecture effectively compensates the user's tremorous motion and the slave follows only the master's voluntary motion in a stable manner. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.