Abstract
During COVID-19 and other pandemics, endotracheal intubation is an
effective and common method to save patients as the virus causes lung
fibrosis and thus patients are unable to breathe spontaneously. Medical
staff need to insert a tube close to the patient’s mouth, thereby
leading to a high risk of cross-infection. To protect medical staff, we
propose an autonomous intubation robot system (AIRS). With the developed
visual servoing and hybrid control method, the entire system can
simulate doctors for satisfying repeatability and safety of intubation
operations. This system includes a self-driving/teleoperation platform,
two co-robot arms, a new multi-functional laryngoscope, force sensors,
and several cameras. In the visual servoing part, we realize recognition
and location of the patient’s face, medical devices, and main
physiological structures to provide real-time navigation. In the hybrid
control part, we establish an oral model, propose an offline planning
method and PID controllers by combining force, vision, and motion, and
apply Virtual Fixture to insert safely. AIRS’s validation is with a
phantom model under a 2-min operation. Our proposed robot is original
and promising in the area of emergent medical robots. We will further
validate AIRS in clinical applications and extend the developed
techniques in other general treatments.