Hydraulic Catheter with Autonomous Vision-Based Navigation: First Results
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17979/ja-cea.2025.46.12198Keywords:
Autonomous robotic systems, Guidance navigation and control, Biomedical and medical image processing and systemsAbstract
The field of biomedical engineering is constantly evolving as researchers explore new materials and technologies to improve patient outcomes. Catheters are commonly used in both minimally invasive surgery and diagnostics, and most of them are externally and manually guided. This paper presents a proof-of-concept of our current developments on robotic catheters with autonomous navigation. The catheter basically consists of a soft hydraulic actuator with a nanocamera at its distal tip, which functions as a steering mechanism (tip orientation), a driving mechanism, to provide axial displacement (pushing or pulling) and rotation about its principal axis to the catheter, and a control unit, which manages the operation of the whole system. The catheter navigates thanks to an algorithm that combines wall tracking by intermittent contact and real-time image processing.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Andrés J. Serrano-Balbontín, Francisco Javier Nevado-Moya, Inés Tejado, Enrique Mancha-Sánchez, Blas M. Vinagre
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