A study on motion control of a robotic endoscope holder using speech recognition

Abstract

This paper presents a design of speech recognition interface for a robotic endoscope holder for abdominal Minimally Invasive Surgery(MIS). A set of seven voice commands are used to control 3 degree of freedom(DOF) robotic arm with remote center of motion(RCM). Speech recognition algorithm was implemented on Ubuntu OS using Pocket Sphinx and achieved 90% success rate. Command signal was delivered to the robotic holder using serial port communication through RS232 cable. Experimental results show that the proposed control strategy has navigation precision up to 2.5mm or 7.7° in horizontal direction, 1.8mm or 3.15° in vertical direction and 9 mm precision during insertion task with camera tip located at distance of 5 cm after RCM point. Average latency between two consecutive commands was 3.34s.