Optimum robot control for 3D virtual fixture in constrained ENT surgery

In ENT surgery, the operating volume is very limited. This is especially true in sinus surgery, when the instrument passes through the sinus cavity to reach the pathological area. The sinus bones impose geometric constraints on the work volume. During the surgery, the surgeon needs to take care of the motion of the instrument tip to accomplish some delicate procedure; meanwhile he/she needs to avoid hitting anatomic constraints. In this paper, we present a method to assist the path following task in a constrained area. We project instrument tip motion, boundary information on the joint displacement via robot kinematics, and then use a constrained quadratic optimization algorithm to compute the optimal set of corresponding joint displacements. In the preliminary study, we show that the optimization constrained control can avoid collision with geometric constraints on the work volume, while keeping the precision of the tool motion.