Optimization Design and Bending Hysteresis Compensation of a Flexible Ureteroscopy Robot

BACKGROUND: Ureteroscopic lithotripsy is a minimally invasive surgical procedure used to treat kidney stones. It faces challenges like a long learning curve, poor ergonomics, and low control accuracy. METHODS: This paper proposes a foldable bedside flexible ureteroscopy robot. Integrating Ureteroscopic lithotripsy requirements with miniaturised design, a kinematic model of the robot was established, and the bending hysteresis at the end of the flexible ureteroscope is compensated based on the Bouc-Wen model. RESULTS: xperiments evaluated the straightness of the linear motion joint and the motion accuracy of the rotary joint. The average straightness error is 1.68 mm and the rotation error is 1.46%. The bending accuracy is improved by 69.64% after hysteresis compensation. Overall performance of the robot is validated through the experiment on the kidney model and the animal experiment. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed robot satisfies the basic requirements of Ureteroscopic lithotripsy and shows a good performance.