Path Verification for Unstructured Environments and Medical Applications

Abstract

Abstract In some robot applications, workspace limitations can interfere with the desired path. In unstructured environments such as robot assisted surgery, checking for this must be done quickly to minimize procedural delays. Here, an algorithm is proposed that computes the distance between a few points on the desired path and the nearest workspace boundary to determine if the path is admissible (i.e. inside the dextrous workspace). Execution time is dependent on the proximity of the path to the reachable workspace limit and is upper bounded by a configurable workspace deadband value. The algorithm is applied to the ROBODOC® Surgical Assistant with good results.