Human-robot collaborated path planning for bevel-tip needle steering in simulated human environment.

Clinical Application of linear percutaneous needle insertion is restricted due to issues such as limited path and deflection. Thus steering of flexible needle is critical demanded in the clinic. Previous studies tended to use autonomous methods to conduct path planning for needle steering. However, these methods had very limited adaptabilities, and they also decreased the human operator's domination of the operation, as clinically required. In this case, teleoperation has been an option, while in complicated environments sole teleoperation is not sufficient for a human operator to generate multi-curved insertion path. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a semiautonomous human-robot collaborated path planning method for teleoperated bevel-tip needle steering. The key module of this method is a human-robot collaboration mechanism which consists of the operator input, environment constraints, and path constraints. The proposed method were tested semi-physically in a simulated human environment and the results validated that the proposed method were able to efficiently assist the operator to generate multi-curved paths under human operator's domination.