The use of robots to assist in knee surgery has the potential to improve the long term outcome of prosthetic implants. The robot can make accurate cuts of complex shapes that not only improve the fit of the prosthesis, but also allow for improved design. The use of pre- programmed position control of the robot can make the cuts with good results. However, there can be a sense of lack of control by the surgeon, who loses close visual and tactile feedback. In addition, the psychological needs of both patients and surgeons must be taken into account when using an autonomous robotic manipulator. The thesis describes a new approach for the use of force control whereby the surgeon can hold a cutter on the end of the robot and move it. The surgeon can supervise and control the robot directly, and execute the cutting using his/her innate sensing, experience and judgement. The strategies of implicit force control and modified damping control, with active motion constraint, can assist the surgeon in executing the pre-planned cuts accurately and efficiently. The thesis presents the analysis of the control strategies and gives results of an experimental evaluation of a three degree-of-freedom manipulator. From preliminary experiments with animal bones, the concepts of artificial motion constraint and the controller design strategy have been shown to be feasible.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:392847 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Ho, Shi-Chi |
| Publisher | Imperial College London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/8747 |
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