An Online Model-Free Adaptive Tracking Controller for Cable-Driven Medical Continuum Manipulators

Continuum manipulators have demonstrated promising potential for flexible access and complicated operation and thus have been emerging and introduced in robot-assisted flexible endoscopy. However, due to their inherent structural compliance and strong nonlinearities, developing an accurate and robust control framework remains challenging. This paper proposes a model-free control method based on the Model-Free Adaptive Control (MFAC) algorithm to accomplish the trajectory tracking for two kinds of continuum manipulators by solely utilizing the robotic system’s real-time input/output data. The presented controller discretizes and dynamically linearizes the motion process of the continuum actuator to obtain a dynamic linearization data (DLD) model. This DLD model can be derived from a pseudo-partial derivative (PPD) matrix updated based on the I/O measurement data for the iterative operation. The stability of the presented MFAC controller can be mathematically guaranteed in theory to provide generality, and the control framework demonstrates a low computational cost and real-time control capability. The superior performance of the presented controller is firstly validated in MATLAB simulations and then compared with the other two controllers. Through experimental validation on two kinds of continuum manipulators, the model-free control framework shows high tracking accuracy and good robustness against the system uncertainty and external disturbances, as well as high transferability.