Title
Enhancing positional accuracy of a pneumatically driven MR-Safe robotic arm for MRI-guided needle insertions
Context
The MAMRI robot is a 6DOF robotic arm driven by pneumatic stepper motors intended for MRI-guided needle insertions. The current design lacks stiffness and uses optical step encoders and pose estimation using fiducial markers, which can be located in the MRI, to estimate the robot position and enable feedback control. Including absolute encoders and redesigning the robot to be stiffer could improve accuracy of the needle positioning and real time tracking performance.
Goal/approach
This assignment intends to research the effect of a redesign of the MAMRI robot, utilizing absolute encoders and an overall stiffer design to improve the accuracy and real time tracking performance of the needle positioning.
Tasks
This assignment will include the following activities to achieve the research goal
- Redesign the MAMRI robot to be stiffer
- Incorporate and investigate the use of absolute encoders
- Develop a feedback control algorithm and integrate the different controllers to optimize positional accuracy
- Change design to make reassembling of stepper motors possible
- Test performance and compare against previous design and state of the art
- Test performance on breast/prostate phantoms