Vinutha Kallem, April 2008

Vinutha Kallem is a PhD student at Johns Hopkins who is visiting on 28-29 April 2008.

Schedule

Monday 9:30a   Richard 10:00a   Open 10:45a   Seminar prep 11:00a   Seminar 12:15p   Lunch: V&V? 1:30p   Mani Chandy 2:00p   Nok 3:15p   Open 4:00p   Open 4:45p   Open

Tuesday 9:30a   Open 10:15a   Open 11:00a   Erik Winfree 11:30p   Richard 12:00p   Lunch: biocircuits? 1:30p   Depart for airport

Abstract

TASK-INDUCED REDUCTION WITH APPLICATIONS TO NEEDLE STEERING

Vinutha Kallem
Mechanical Engineering Department
Johns Hopkins University

Monday, April 28, 2008
11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Steele Bldg. Room 114 (CDS Library)

What if sensitive organs prevents a physician from accessing a percutaneous target using a straight, rigid needle? One promising solution involves steering flexible bevel-tip needles. These needles introduce exciting robotics and control systems challenges because the needle tip evolves on a Lie group, and the system exhibits a high degree of nonholonomy.

In this work, we present image-guided controllers for steerable needles to improve the accuracy of needle insertions. We build upon a previously proposed needle steering model to develop nonlinear observer-based controllers to drive the needle tip to a desired subspace. These controllers are designed to work in conjunction with subspace planners for the needle tip to reach a desired location in human tissue. We show that the tasks of these controllers induces symmetry, thus resulting in a reduced system which greatly simplifies controller and observer design. We propose a method to perform such reductions for generic nonholonomic kinematic systems on Lie groups with left-invariant vector fields. This technique is used to develop controllers for curve-following of a unicycle and subspace-following in needle steering. We show that this "task-induced" reduction lifts to mechanical systems.