Coordinated control of a dual-arm robot for surgical instrument sorting tasks

Abstract Surgical instrument sorting tasks are usually performed by medical staff. Because of the large number and special structure of surgical instruments, the manual processing method has certain drawbacks: it is time-consuming, poses an infection risk and has potential for errors. Moreover, a relatively sharp surgical instrument poses a potential threat to the staff’s health. In this paper, to complete the sorting task accurately and avoid these threats, a coordinated control strategy based on fuzzy hybrid control is proposed for dual-arm coordinated operations. First, sorting information is obtained through identification, location and grasping pose detection of surgical instruments. Second, according to the characteristics of the dual-arm coordinated operation, a kinematics model of three tight coordination tasks is established and a passive compliant structure is applied to simplify the motion of surgical scissor stretching. Then, a hybrid fuzzy control strategy is proposed for dual-arm coordinated operations. Using this strategy, the contact force in the process of unlocking surgical scissors is adaptively adjusted. Finally, the proposed control strategy is validated using comparative analysis and in robotic experiments. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed control strategy is suitable for a dual-arm robot to efficiently implement instrument sorting tasks.