Nonlinear friction modelling and compensation control of hysteresis phenomena for a pair of tendon-sheath actuated surgical robots

Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES) is a special method that allows surgical operations via natural orifices like mouth, anus, and vagina, without leaving visible scars. The use of flexible tendon-sheath mechanism (TSM) is common in these systems because of its light weight in structure, flexibility, and easy transmission of power. However, nonlinear friction and backlash hysteresis pose many challenges to control of such systems; in addition, they do not provide haptic feedback to assist the surgeon in the operation of the systems. In this paper, we propose a new dynamic friction model and backlash hysteresis nonlinearity for a pair of TSM to deal with these problems. The proposed friction model, unlike current approaches in the literature, is smooth and able to capture the force at near zero velocity when the system is stationary or operates at small motion. This model can be used to estimate the friction force for haptic feedback purpose. To improve the system tracking performances, a backlash hysteresis model will be introduced, which can be used in a feedforward controller scheme. The controller involves a simple computation of the inverse hysteresis model. The proposed models are configuration independent and able to capture the nonlinearities for arbitrary tendon-sheath shapes. A representative experimental setup is used to validate the proposed models and to demonstrate the improvement in position tracking accuracy and the possibility of providing desired force information at the distal end of a pair of TSM slave manipulator for haptic feedback to the surgeons. •A backlash hysteresis and friction model for tendon-sheath system are developed.•The parameters of the models are identified and optimized for the test setup.•The proposed scheme is used in feedforward for control purpose.•The friction model is used to provide haptic information.•The proposed models and control structure are validated satisfactorily.