MPC Design of a Continuum Robot for Pulmonary Interventional Surgery Using Koopman Operators

This letter focuses on the flexible tube of a bronchoscope robot used in pulmonary intervention surgery, which is considered as a continuum robot. The dynamics model is proposed based on the Koopman operator, leveraging real data to solve for the system matrix parameters accurately. To enhance control precision, we designed a model predictive control (MPC) algorithm aimed at tracking the desired curvature and deflection angles of the flexible tube. The MPC controller uses real-time data from electromagnetic sensors to adjust the tube shape, ensuring accurate and responsive manipulation. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm are validated through extensive experiments conducted on the Binary experimental platform. Compared with the traditional open-loop control method, the proposed algorithm has achieved significant improvements in tracking performance and operational reliability. Each system state error of the proposed algorithm is smaller, which means that better tracking performance can be obtained under the proposed MPC scheme.