On the Design of a Safe Human-Friendly Teleoperated System for Doppler Sonography

Abstract

Variable stiffness actuators are employed to improve the safety features of robots that share a common workspace with humans. In this paper, a study of a joint variable stiffness device developed by PPRIME Institute—called V2SOM— for implementation in the joints of a multi-DoF robot is presented. A comparison of the interaction forces produced by a rigid body robot and a flexible robot using the V2SOM is provided through a dynamic simulator of a 7-DoF robot. As an example of potential applications, robot-assisted Doppler echography is proposed, which mainly focuses on guaranteeing patient safety when the robot holding the ultrasound probe comes into contact with the patient. For this purpose, an evaluation of both joint and Cartesian control approaches is provided. The simulation results allow us to corroborate the effectiveness of the V2SOM device to guarantee human safety when it is implemented in a multi-DoF robot.