Design and navigation method of a soft robot for single-port transvesical radical prostatectomy

Currently, the rigid instruments used for laparoscopic radical resection of prostate cancer not only have the risk of damage to tissues, blood vessels, and nerves, but their limited freedom will also cause surgical blind areas. Soft robots are expected to solve these issues due to inherent flexibility, compliance, and safe interaction with tissues and organs. In addition, to achieve high surgical accuracy and provide precise guidance for surgeons, the navigation method should be studied for the soft robot.

A soft robot system for single-port transvesical radical prostatectomy (STRP) is developed, and a navigation method combining fiber Bragg gratings and electromagnetic tracking is proposed for the soft robot. To validate the soft robot design and the effectiveness of the navigation method, different groups of experiments are conducted.

The proposed navigation method can achieve accurate location and shape sensing of the soft manipulator. The experiments show that the maximum tip sensing error is 2.691 mm, which is 5.38 \(\%\) $\%$ of the robot length for static configurations, and that the average tip sensing error is 1.966 mm, which corresponds to 3.93 \(\%\) $\%$ of the robot length for dynamic scenarios. Additionally, phantom tests demonstrate that the designed soft robot can enter the prostate through navigation guidance in a master–slave control mode and cover the entire prostate space.

The designed soft robot system, due to its soft structure, good flexibility, and accurate navigation, is expected to improve surgical safety and precision, thereby exhibiting significant potential for STRP.