Publications by authors named "Lavinia Barducci"

Magnetically actuated endoscopes are currently transitioning in to clinical use for procedures such as colonoscopy, presenting numerous benefits over their conventional counterparts. Intelligent and easy-to-use control strategies are an essential part of their clinical effectiveness due to the un-intuitive nature of magnetic field interaction. However, work on developing intelligent control for these devices has mainly been focused on general purpose endoscope navigation.

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Magnetically actuated robots have become increasingly popular in medical endoscopy over the past decade. Despite the significant improvements in autonomy and control methods, progress within the field of medical magnetic endoscopes has mainly been in the domain of enhanced navigation. Interventional tasks such as biopsy, polyp removal, and clip placement are a major procedural component of endoscopy.

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In the present work we discuss a novel dynamic control approach for magnetically actuated robots, by proposing an technique, robust towards parametric uncertainties and unknown bounded disturbances. The former generally arise due to partial knowledge of the robots' dynamic parameters, such as inertial factors, the latter are the outcome of unpredictable interaction with unstructured environments. In order to show the application of the proposed approach, we consider controlling the Magnetic Flexible Endoscope (MFE) which is composed of a soft-tethered Internal Permanent Magnet (IPM), actuated with a single External Permanent Magnet (EPM).

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The present letter investigates a novel control approach for magnetically driven soft-tethered capsules for colonoscopy-a potentially painless approach for colon inspection. The focus of this work is on a class of devices composed of a magnetic capsule endoscope actuated by a single external permanent magnet. Actuation is achieved by manipulating the external magnet with a serial manipulator, which in turn produces forces and torques on the internal magnetic capsule.

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