Model-free image guidance for intelligent tubular robots with pre-clinical feasibility study: Towards minimally invasive trans-orifice surgery

Comprised of multiple precurved concentric tubes, continuum tubular robots are capable to reach surgical targets while bypassing critical anatomical obstacles during minimally invasive surgeries, such as transnasal and transoral surgeries. To automatically track the surgical target and compensate undesired disturbance, an eye-in-hand image-based visual servoing algorithm is presented in this paper to control in-house continuum tubular robots. The proposed visual servoing approach does not require any prior knowledge on kinametic models of the robots in order to avoid the errors introduced by imaging-sensor calibration and 3D position reconstruction. Preclinical cadaveric experiments have been demonstrated in the paper to illustrate the feasibility of the model-free automatic visual servoing method.