Advancing Robotic Palpation for Tumor Detection via Real-Time Tissue Viscoelastic Modeling with Collaborative Robotics

This long abstract introduces a new approach to the real-time estimation of body viscoelasticity parameters and penetration of the end effector during palpation exams using a collaborative robotic arm. The proposed estimator simplifies the nonlinear Hunt-Crossley model by utilizing the dimensionality reduction method. An extended Kalman filter is employed to enable online estimation by integrating the dynamic contact model. The algorithm is tested on various silicone samples, a material that mimics biological tissues, including those containing embedded hard inclusions to simulate cancerous cells within softer tissue.