Design of an Acupuncture Robot with Vision-Guided Positioning and Force Compliance Control

Acupuncture is a classic treatment method in traditional Chinese medicine. At present, it mainly relies on experienced doctors for manual treatment. The inheritance of skills and the guarantee of treatment effects require lots of training to guarantee, which is far from meeting needs. In this paper, an acupuncture robot system was designed to ensure the accuracy of acupoint positioning and safety during needle insertion, making robot-assisted acupuncture treatment a feasible alternative. The acupuncture robot has an acupoint marking and visual guidance system. According to the location of the acupoints accurately marked by the doctor on the patient's 3D reconstructed model, the robot is accurately guided to perform acupuncture treatment. The positioning error of this system is within 1.5mm, which meets the needs of acupuncture. In addition, a terminal needle-punching manipulator with compliant needle insertion force control, needle insertion depth feedback, and continuous needle insertion functions is designed. Through the closed-loop control of the needle-punching manipulator, the safety and accuracy of the acupuncture robot are fully guaranteed. Finally, an acupuncture experiment was designed to verify the accuracy and safety of the acupuncture robot.