Abstract—An active flexible needle is a self-actuating needle that can bend in the tissue and reach the clinical targets while avoiding anatomic obstacles. In robot-assisted needle- based medical procedures, motion planning is a vital aspect of operations. It is challenging due to the nonholonomic motion of the needle and the presence of anatomic obstacles and sensitive organs that must be avoided. We propose a novel and fast motion planning algorithm for the robot- assisted active flexible needle. The algorithm is based on Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees combined with greedy- heuristic strategy and reachability-guided strategy. Linear segment and relaxation of insertion orientation are taken into consideration to the paths. Results show that the proposed algorithm yields superior results as compared to the commonly used algorithm in terms of computational speed, form of path and robustness of searching ability, which potentially make it suitable for the real-time intraoperative planning in clinical operations.

Index Terms—active flexible needle, motion planning, rapidly-exploring random tree, nonholonomic system, minimally invasive surgery, robot assisted surgery

Cite: Yan-Jiang Zhao, Bardia Konh, Mohammad Honarvar, Felix Orlando Maria Joseph, Tarun K. Podder, Parsaoran Hutapea, Adam P. Dicker, and Yan Yu, "3D Motion Planning for Robot-Assisted Active Flexible Needle Based on Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees," Jounal of Automation and Control Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 360-367, October, 2015. doi: 10.12720/joace.3.5.360-367