Abstract
A master-slave type remote ultrasound diagnostic system was developed. The controller has impedance control capability for the master and slave manipulators' positions to display the contact force between the ultrasound probe and the affected part of the patient. And it has Continuous Path (CP) control capability for the slave manipulator's orientation in the remote ultrasound diagnostic system. This paper presents the controller of the slave manipulator's orientation. The remote ultrasound diagnostic system is one of the remote medical systems through the communication network (LAN, ISDN, ADSL, etc.) . Therefore, it is difficult to communicate information for control at high sampling rate. To cope with this problem, CP controller is introduced to this remote medical system.
CP control realizes smooth and accurate motion of the slave manipulator even if it is available to use a lower sampling rate of the transmitting orientation data of the master manipulator. As a result, it allows the slave manipulator to improve safety and decrease the volume of the transmitting data. The experimental results demonstrate the accuracy of the path control of the slave manipulator during CP control in the master-slave manipulation system comparing with the conventional Point To Point (PTP) control.
