Control of a Smart Active Flexible Needle for Therapeutic procedures

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is more efficient than open surgery on the grounds that the recuperation and hospitalization time of MIS is significantly lesser than that of ordinary surgical methods. Till date physicians perform MIS procedures using conventional flexible passive needles. From the literature survey, it is observed that self-actuating needle promises enhancement in target reaching accuracy thereby widening the needle steerable methodology. Considering this into account, here, we aim to develop and control a shape memory alloy actuated smart needle by state feedback controller. We started from a previously proposed passive flexible needle in the literature to the proposed smart active needle. Since only one cause of idle movement of passive needle is the bevelled-tip. The main objective of the proposed controller for this smart needle is to remain within the desired plane of interest inside the tissue region. The three control inputs, one primary and two secondary are deployed to the proposed state feedback controller. Numerical simulations are presented to evaluate the proposed control technique on the developed smart active needle.