ABSTRACT
The use of new soft robots in minimally invasive surgery offers exciting new possibilities while it generates new challenges for the technical implementation. This chapter presents methods for the detection of the STIFF-FLOP arm using visual sensing means. Based on the image information of an endoscopic camera, the visible sections are evaluated to determine the position of the manipulator. A variety of algorithms for the detection of the STIFFFLOP arm as well as for the detection of its module connectors will be described.
A stereo camera is used to register all components in a common frame. A transformation tree is set up to refer the position of the STIFF-FLOP arm in the endoscopic camera image to the base of the STIFF-FLOP arm.
All methods have been integrated and tested in the newly developed system.
