Development of airway management training system WKA-4: Control system for simulation of real world condition of patient's motion

In recent years advanced robotic technology has seen increasing use in the medical field to assist in the development of efficient training systems. Such training systems must fulfill the following criteria: they must provide quantitative information, simulate the real-world conditions of the task, and assure training effectiveness. For these reasons, we have developed the Waseda Kyotokagaku Airway series to fulfill all those requirements using actuators and sensors as the main elements. Our WKA series could not completely simulate real-world conditions of the patients such as the motions of head, mandible, and tongue, which is important for the task of human airway management. In order to simulate the motions of those parts as in a real human being, we propose Waseda Kyotokagaku Airway No. 4, which meets all requirements of effective training systems. Particularly, for realistic simulation of the motions of those parts, the WKA-4 has improved mechanisms with high-fidelity simulated human anatomy, and Virtual Compliance Control is implemented to reproduce the stiffness of the human's muscles. In this paper, we present the hardware configuration and discuss the realistic simulation of the motions of those parts using a motion control system and control system for the WKA-4. Finally, we present a set of experiments carried out using doctors to verify our proposed mechanism and control system.