Robotic assistance for manipulating a flexible endoscope

Flexible ureteroscopes are widely used for inspection, access, and manipulation in the ureter and kidney during uretero-renoscopy. However, existing endoscope designs rely on decades-old manual controls for translation, rotation, and tip flexion. The development of a more intuitive and user-friendly control system has the potential to greatly enhance the safety, efficacy, and efficiency of endoscopic procedures. Based on a first generation prototype, our lab designed an ergonomically enhanced flexible endoscopy robotic system. The system was designed to enable the surgeon to operate the endoscope through a low cost game controller. The kinematics were analyzed considering the nonlinearity of flexion driving and cable slack. The kinematics control was combined with the direct control for the system. The initial evaluations show the feasibility of this approach.