Robotic Wound Closure: Detection and Control of Patient Motion

Physiological organ motion, such as breathing movement, presents a challenge in the development of medical robots for autonomous wound closure. The robot’s task is to determine the wound’s pose and relay magnetic fixtures near the wound edge with pre-specified accuracy. To address this problem, a visual motion detection system (VMDS) is designed to determine the pose of a wound. To ensure precise tracking of the wound, a varying target sliding mode control (VT-SMC) scheme was developed to follow the wound movement. Experiments demonstrate excellent agreement, with less than 0.67 mm variance between the VMDS measurements, real motion for three translations, and 0.26 degrees for three rotations. The relay error is 0.86 mm under the patient motion (position: 15 mm, orientation: 5 deg) in the autonomous robotic wound closure system. The developed robot successfully achieves the necessary motion tracking, which proves sufficient for the accuracy of wound closure in clinical applicability.