Designing Controllers for 4-DOF Robotic Catheters

Collaborators: Dr. Alperen Degirmenci, Prof. Robert D. Howe

Undergraduate Senior Thesis

Cardiac catheters are long, flexible plastic instruments commonly used during heart surgeries. However, they can be difficult to control manually and commercially-available robotic catheter systems often do not provide the capabilities for intuitive and precise control. My senior thesis project aimed to create user interfaces for a four degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) robotic catheter system that is intuitive for the user to decrease operation time and increase navigation reliability. I created user interfaces based on two different reference frames for control: joint space and Cartesian (XYZ) space. The joint space interface was modeled after current catheter handles, with knobs for bending and rolling the catheter, and tactile switches for linear motion. The Cartesian space interface used electromagnetic sensors mounted on a replica model to mimic the movement of the robotic catheter. Both interfaces had sub-millimeter jitter and drift, with angular resolutions < 0.1 degrees. User studies were conducted to determine the optimal interface for a variety of users.