Towards localizing on the surface of the beating heart

This paper presents preliminary work toward localizing on a surface which undergoes periodic deformation, as an aspect of research on HeartLander, a miniature epicardial crawling robot. Using only position measurements from the robot, the aim of this work is to use the nonuniform movements of the heart as features to aid in localization. Using a particle filter, with motion and observation models which accurately model the robotic system, registration and localization parameters can be quickly and accurately identified. The presented framework is demonstrated in simulation on dynamic 2-D models which approximate the deformation of the surface of the heart.