Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072

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Mechatronics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mechatronics

A hybrid force-magnetic control scheme for flexible medical device steering✩

Yuanrui Huang a,b , Runyu Ma c , Hongbin Liu d,b,e ,∗
a
School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
b
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
c
School of General Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100190, China
d
Centre of AI and Robotics (CAIR), Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hongkong, China
e School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King’s College London, London, UK

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Magnetically-actuated flexible surgical robot has promising applications for ultra-narrow and tortuous orifices,
Soft robotics however, how to minimize the energy consumption, physical interaction between the external electromagnet
Magnetic actuation (EEM) and the human body, and the bulky size of the magnetic actuation system remains a major challenge.
Steerable catheters/needles
This work presents a hybrid force-magnetic control scheme that can magnetically steer catheters with the
Force control
least distance in order to reduce energy consumption and the size of the magnet. In addition, the use of
force feedback control allows the motion of magnet adapts to the movement of patient’s body, ensuring safety
during the operation. The scheme is composed of two parts: a Jacobian-based inverse kinematic model that
enables 3D position control of the catheter’s distal tip through the EEM, and a force control algorithm based
on admittance control that converts external forces applied to the magnet into position errors, making the
system compliant that allows for safe contact with the human body. Experiment was conducted to validate
the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed control scheme. The results show that the catheter’s distal tip can
be controlled to follow desired trajectories with a minimum Root Mean Square (RMS) error of 0.43 ± 0.22 mm,
and the hybrid control scheme can reduce electrical power consumption effectively while achieving similar
performance with an RMS error of 0.52 ± 0.41 mm. It is also able to maintain contact forces within a safe
range (<15 N) during actuation.

1. Introduction this study, we developed a magnetic CR by inserting multiple internal

In recent decades, numerous continuum robots(CR) have been de-
veloped for minimally invasive surgery due to their flexibility and
dexterity. CRs are commonly actuated by different mechanisms, in-
cluding tendon actuation [1], hydraulic systems [2], and pneumatic
systems [3,4], etc. Magnetically actuated CRs have the potential to be
miniaturized to submillimeter levels and navigated in narrow lumens
such as vascular and bronchus, as they do not require inner channels
for actuation [5].
Various methods have been proposed for the manufacturing of
magnetic CRs, such as embedding current-carrying coil sets into the
catheter and shaping the catheter with the compound of magnetic
powder and soft material [6–11]. In addition, several studies have
explored the integration of permanent magnets into flexible catheters
to develop magnetic CRs [12–18],This type of CR is advantageous
in terms of fabrication ease and actuation capabilities, owing to the
strong magnetism exhibited by the permanent magnets. Therefore, in
permanent magnets (IPMs) at equal intervals inside a silicone tube, the
prototype of this CR is shown in Fig. 1(b). The nitinol wire is used to
increase the stiffness of the base of the CR, allowing the entire CR to be
pushed by a self-made advancement system. Different types of magnetic
actuation systems have been proposed to generate a specific magnetic
field to actuate the CR. A distributed electromagnet system with multi-
ple independent electromagnets has been tested in [19–21]. However,
the workspace of this system is limited since all the electromagnets
are immovable. One alternative solution is to combine the external
magnet with a mobile module, such as a multi-axis manipulator, to
increase the system’s workspace and flexibility [22–27]. Recently, Lin
et al.demonstrated the control of the position and orientation of the
catheter tip by utilizing a robotic arm to manipulate a magnet [28].
However, integrating the system with other medical equipment poses
challenges due to its high energy consumption and bulky size. Min-
imizing the distance between the system and its controlled device is

✩ This paper was recommended for publication by Associate Editor Kaddour Bouazza-Marouf.
∗ Corresponding author at: School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
E-mail address: liuhongbin@ia.ac.cn (H. Liu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2023.103072
Received 24 April 2023; Received in revised form 28 July 2023; Accepted 14 September 2023
Available online 27 September 2023
0957-4158/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Y. Huang et al.
Fig. 1. (a) The design of the magnetic actuation system. EEM represents the external
electromagnet (b) The prototype of the CR.
an effective method to reduce the weight and energy consumption of
the system. On the other hand, placing the device too close to the
patient can pose a risk of injury due to potential physical contact. In the
teleoperated robotic neurointerventional platform proposed by Zhao
et al. a working range for the external magnet was manually defined
to avoid collisions with the human body [29]. However, this does not
address the issue of how to protect the patient’s safety when contact
occurs.
To address the aforementioned problems, this study proposes a
hybrid force-magnetic control scheme that combines a magnetic control
scheme and a robot force control. The main contributions of this work
are:
1. A magnetic control scheme that transforms the magnetic ac-
tuation of the catheter into a multi-objective optimization problem.
By introducing a sub-optimized objective focused on minimizing the
supplied current of the external electromagnet (EEM), this scheme
effectively reduces the energy consumption of the system.
2. The introduction of a force control algorithm that makes the mag-
netic actuation system compliant, allowing for safe contact between
the EEM and the patient during the magnetic actuation procedure. This
leads to a reduction in the system’s size and energy consumption.
3. The introduction of a sub-optimized objective aimed at min-
imizing the potential increment in contact force. By predicting the
contact force with the external environment, this objective significantly
improves the actuation performance of the control scheme when the
EEM comes into contact with the patient, ultimately reducing the
actuation time of the system.
2
Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072
The design of the proposed magnetic actuation system is presented
in Fig. 1(a). The structure of this article is as follows, the kinematic
of the magnetically actuated catheter is introduced in Section 2. We
explain the concept of the Hybrid force-magnetic control in Section 3.
The setup of the experiment and result analysis is arranged in Section 4.
Finally, we give the discussion in Section 5 and the conclusion in
Section 6.
2. Magnetically-actuated catheter
In this section, the kinematic model for the distributed magnetically-
actuated catheter is described, followed by the analysis of magnetic
actuation.
2.1. Kinematic modeling
To characterize the deformation of a CR, various kinematic models
have been proposed, including the Cosserat rod theory, constant cur-
vature, and pseudo-rigid-body model (PRBM) [11,15,30]. Among these
models, PRBM has been shown to be efficient in terms of computation
while also taking external loading into account [28,31–33]. The PRBM
simplifies elastomeric CRs into a serial chain of rigid links, connected
by a finite number of revolute joints. Each joint has a corresponding
stiffness coefficient to convert the bending moment of the CR into
its rotation angle. The forward kinematics of the CR depends on the
configuration of all joints.
The catheter is actuated by the EEM remotely. The EEM-generated
magnetic field exerts force and torque on each IPM as:
𝒇 = (𝝁 ⋅ ∇)𝐵
(1)
𝒎=𝝁×𝐵
where 𝝁 is the magnetic moment of each IPM. 𝒎 and 𝒇 denote magnetic
torque and force acting on each IPM by outside magnetic field 𝐵. After
testing, it was found that the force applied to the IPMs by the external
magnetic field was negligible due to the large distance (>50mm).
Moreover, the interaction between the small-sized IPMs was also found
to be minimal. Therefore, we ignore 𝒇 and the interaction between
IPMs. As shown in Fig. 2(a), 𝒎 tries to make the IPM parallel to the
applied field, resulting in no axial twisting of the IPM. To model the
catheter in this study, we use the PRBM to approximate the catheter
as a sequence of rigid links connected by 2 Degrees of Freedom(DoF)
revolute joints.
Fig. 2(a) shows the concept of the proposed kinematic model of the
catheter, we divide the catheter into 𝑛 + 2 links, 𝑛 + 2 revolute joints
(𝑛 is the number of IPMs) and 1 prismatic joint. The first piece of the
catheter is silicone tube implanted by nitinol wire with variable length
(controlled by the advancement system), it is represented by a revolute
joint and a prismatic joint respectively.
In the assumption of PRBM, the stiffness of each segment is approx-
imated by two rotation springs assigned at each end of the segment.
The stiffness coefficient 𝑘𝑠𝑝𝑟 of the rotation spring is:
2𝐸𝐼
𝑘𝑠𝑝𝑟 = (2)
𝑐
where 𝑐, 𝐸, and 𝐼 is the length, Young’s modulus, and the area moment
of inertia of the segment of the rod. For the revolute joint located
between two segments, its stiffness coefficient is equivalent to the
coefficient of 2 rotation springs connected in series.
Since each revolute joint in PRBM is regarded as a 2 DoF joint, the
stiffness coefficient in these two directions is identical. As shown in
Fig. 2(b) The relationship between the torque on the 𝑗th joint and its
configuration expressed in the 𝑗th joint frame is:
⎡0⎤ ⎡0⎤
⎢𝜏 ⎥ = 𝑘𝑗 ⎢𝑞 ⎥
⎢ ⎥𝑗𝑦
⎢ 𝑗𝑦 ⎥ (3)
⎣𝜏𝑗𝑧 ⎦ ⎣𝑞𝑗𝑧 ⎦
𝝉 𝑗𝑏 = 𝑘𝑗 𝒒𝑗𝑏
Y. Huang et al. Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072

𝑴(𝟎) is a transformation matrix that shows the initial position and

orientation of the endeffector and 𝑻𝑃 𝑂𝐸 is the product of exponentials
parts of transformation. 𝑺𝑟𝑖 denotes the screw axis of the i-th revolute
[ ] [ ]
joint, the prismatic joint’s screw axis is 𝑺𝑝 . 𝑺𝑟𝑖 , 𝑺𝑝 ∈ 𝑠𝑒(3) are:

⎡ ⎡𝐿𝑖1 ⎤⎤
[ ]
[ ] ⎢ 𝒒𝑖 −𝒒𝑖 × ⎢ 0 ⎥⎥
⎥
𝑺𝑟𝑖 = ⎢ × ⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎣ 0 ⎦⎥
⎢ 𝟎 0 ⎥
⎣ ⎦
(6)
⎡ ⎡ 𝑙 ⎤⎤
[ ] ⎢[𝟎]× ⎢0⎥⎥
𝑺𝑝 = ⎢ ⎢ ⎥⎥
⎢ ⎣0⎦⎥
⎢ 𝟎 0 ⎥⎦
⎣
The 𝐿𝑖1 denotes the distance from the proximal end to the 𝑖th
[ ]
joint when the catheter is in the initial configuration. 𝒒𝑖 × is the
Skew-symmetric matrix of 𝒒𝑖 .

2.2. Model calibration

In the PRBM, the torque applied on the catheter is accumulated from

the free distal tip to the base. The relationship between the joint torque
and magnetic torque can be written in matrix form as:
⎡ 𝝉1 ⎤ ⎡ 𝒎1 ⎤ ⎡ 𝒈1 ⎤
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
𝝉 𝒎 𝒈
𝐹 = ⎢ 2 ⎥ = 𝑨⎢ 2 ⎥ + 𝑩⎢ 2 ⎥ (7)
⎢ ⋮ ⎥ ⎢ ⋮ ⎥ ⎢ ⋮ ⎥
⎢𝝉 ⎥ ⎢𝒎 ⎥ ⎢𝒈 ⎥
⎣ 𝑛+2 ⎦ ⎣ 𝑛+2 ⎦ ⎣ 𝑛+2 ⎦
where 𝐹 ∈ 𝑅3(𝑛+2) is a set of torques acting on each joint, 𝒎𝑖 is the
magnetic torque on each IPM which is obtained by Eq. (1). 𝒈𝑖 is the
gravity force of each IPM. Matrix 𝑨 and 𝑩 are as:
⎡𝑰 𝑰 ⋯ 𝑰⎤
⎢ ⎥
0 𝑰 ⋯ ⋮⎥
𝑨=⎢
⎢⋮ ⋮ ⋱ ⋮⎥
⎢0 0 ⋯ 𝑰 ⎥⎦
⎣
Fig. 2. Diagrams of the magnetically-actuated catheter steered by the EEM. (a) The [ 1] [ 2] [ 𝑛+2 ] (8)
kinematics model of the catheter based on the PRBM, the external magnetic field will ⎡ 𝒑1 × 𝒑 ⋯ 𝒑1 × ⎤
[ 12 ]×
exert torque to the Internal permanent magnet(IPM) (b) In the body frame, the virtual ⎢ 0 𝒑2 × ⋯ ⋮ ⎥
stiffness converts the torque acting on the joints into their configuration. 𝑩=⎢ ⋮ ⎥
⎢ ⋮ ⋱ [ ⋮ ] ⎥
⎢ 0 0 ⋯ 𝒑𝑛+2 ⎥
⎣ 𝑛+2 × ⎦

𝑘𝑗 is the bending stiffness of the 𝑗th joint. The subscript 𝑏 denotes where 𝑰 ∈ 𝑅(3×3) is a 3 × 3 identity matrix. 𝒑𝑖𝑗 denotes the position
the torque and the joint’s configuration is represented in the 𝑗th joint’s [ ]
body frame. 𝒒𝑗 denotes the 𝑗th joint’s configuration, 𝝉 𝑗 is the torque vector between IPM 𝑖 and joint 𝑗, 𝒑𝑖𝑗 ∈ 𝑅(3×3) is its Skew-symmetric
×
on the joint. To construct a closed-form equation that describes the matrix.
relationship between the external magnetic field and the configuration Due to the rapid response of the elastic catheter to the external
of all joint, we rewrite (3) in the fixed global frame. wrench, it will quickly converge to the static equilibrium state when
the external magnetic field changes. The static equilibrium can be
𝝉 𝑗𝑓 = 𝑅𝑓 𝑏 𝝉 𝑗𝑏
expressed as the combination of Eqs. (4) and (7) as:
= 𝑅𝑓 𝑏 𝑘𝑗 𝒒𝑗𝑏
(4)
= 𝑘𝑗 𝑅𝑓 𝑏 𝒒𝑗𝑏 𝑲𝒒 = 𝑨𝑀 + 𝑩𝐺
= 𝑘𝑗 𝒒𝑗𝑓 ⎡ 𝑘1 𝑰 ⋯ 0 ⎤
(9)
𝑲 =⎢ ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ ⎥
where 𝑅𝑓 𝑏 is the rotation matrix between the joint frame and the fixed ⎢ ⎥
frame. According to (4), the torque of each joint is still linear with its ⎣ 0 ⋯ 𝑘𝑛+2 𝑰 ⎦
configuration in the global coordinate {𝑓 }. Thus, the configuration of where 𝑀 = [𝒎1 , … , 𝒎𝑛+2 ] and 𝐺 = [𝒈1 , … , 𝒈𝑛+2 ]. 𝑲 denotes the stiffness
the whole CR is expressed by 𝒒 = [𝒒1 , … , 𝒒𝑛+2 ] and a variable 𝑙, the matrix for all the n+2 revolute joints. To calibrate the value of 𝑲 and
forward kinematics of the catheter is written as: 𝐺, we recorded the deformation of the CR when the EEM was exposed
𝑻 (𝒒, 𝑙) = 𝑻𝑃 𝑂𝐸 𝑴(𝟎) to currents of various intensities at different locations as a dataset. The
[ ]∏
𝑛+2 [𝑺𝑟𝑖 ] unknown parameter values are estimated by minimizing the following
𝑻𝑃 𝑂𝐸 = 𝑒[𝑺𝑟1 ] 𝑒 𝑺𝑝 𝑖=2 𝑒
objective function:
⎡1 0 0 𝐿𝑛+2 ⎤ (5)
1
⎢ ⎥ ∑
𝑁
0 1 0 0 ⎥
𝑴(𝟎) = ⎢ argmin (𝒒𝑖 − 𝑲 −1 (𝑨𝑀𝑖 + 𝑩𝑖 𝐺)) (10)
⎢0 0 1 0 ⎥ 𝑲,𝐺 𝑖
⎢0 0 0 1 ⎥⎦
⎣ where 𝒒𝑖 , 𝑀𝑖 , and 𝑩𝑖 are the 𝑖th group of data in the dataset which
where 𝑻 (𝒒, 𝑙) is the transformation matrix of the tip of the catheter. are obtained through the stereo vision module of the experimental
𝐿𝑛+2
1
is the initial length of whole catheter without any advancement, platform. 𝑁 is the total number of data samples.

3
Y. Huang et al. Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072

Fig. 3. The Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control Scheme is composed of a magnetic controller based on quadratic programming and a force controller based on admittance control.
The magnetic controller takes as input a target position 𝒙𝑑 , and the actual position 𝒙𝑐 , and produces the desired pose of EEM, the desired current, and desired advancement. The
force controller converts the external force 𝑓𝑒𝑥 applied to the EEM into its position error.

3. The hybrid force/magnetic control Apart from the state of EEM, there is another advancement vari-
able 𝑙 that controls the movement of the catheter. To incorporate the
As shown in Fig. 3, the Hybrid force/magnetic control scheme Jacobian-based control of EEM, the Jacobian matrix 𝑱𝑥𝑙 is needed. As a
consists of a magnetic controller, a force controller, and a stereo vision result of the advancement system is approximated by a prismatic joint,
system. In clinical applications, the stereo vision system can be a CT 𝑱𝑥𝑙 is derived as:
scan or X-ray, etc. MRI is not suitable due to the potential impact of its
strong magnetic field on the system. The magnetic controller converts ⎡1⎤
𝜕𝒙
the problem of steering the catheter with the EEM into a quadratic 𝑱𝑥𝑙 = = 𝑒[𝒒1 ]× ⎢0⎥ (13)
𝜕𝑙 ⎢ ⎥
programming problem, the required pose and current of the EEM are ⎣0⎦
obtained by solving it. The force controller is based on admittance
control. It treats the position of the EEM as a virtual spring and converts 𝑒[𝒒1 ]× denotes the rotation matrix corresponding to the first revolute
the measured contact force into a change in the pose of the EEM to joint. However, there is coupling effect 𝑱𝑞𝑙 between the advancement
achieve compliance control. system and the stiffness coefficient as well as the torque add on each
joint.
3.1. Jacobian-based magnetic control
𝜕(𝑲 −1 𝐹 ) 𝜕(𝑲 −1 ) 𝜕(𝑨𝑀 + 𝑩𝐺)
𝑱𝑞𝑙 = = 𝐹 + 𝑲 −1 (14)
𝜕𝑙 𝜕𝑙 𝜕𝑙
In this proposed system, we use an EEM mounted on a multi-DOF
robot as the magnetic field source to remotely actuate the CR with Advancing the catheter only increases the length of the nitinol wire
IPMs. During actuation, the EEM maintains its orientation pointing portion and changes the stiffness coefficient of the first 2 joints.
towards the center of mass of the CR. The magnetic field generated
𝜕𝑘−1
1
𝜕𝑘−1
2 1
by the EEM is approximated using the magnetic dipole model. Since = = (15)
the distance between the EEM and each IPM is much greater than the 𝜕𝑙 𝜕𝑙 2𝐸𝐼
distance between IPMs, we assume that the external magnetic field at As the length of the catheter increases, the torque from gravity
each IPM is uniform. According to (1), The magnetic torque exerted by changes due to the change of position. The matrix 𝑩 in eq (7) have
the external magnetic field on each IPM is expressed as: a gradient on 𝑙 because the relative position vector 𝒑𝑖𝑗 is determined
by 𝑙. However, only the relative position from the first joint to others
𝜇 𝝁 (𝐶) [ ] ⎡⎢ ⎤
𝑠𝑖𝑛(𝛽)
[ ]
𝒎 𝑗 = 𝝁𝑗 × 𝐵 = 0 𝑒 𝝁𝑗 × −𝑠𝑖𝑛(𝛼)𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝛽)⎥ (11) change:
2𝜋𝑟3 ⎢ ⎥
⎣ 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝛼)𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝛽) ⎦ ⎧ ⎡1⎤
where 𝝁𝑒 (𝐶) is a 3 × 1 vector denotes the magnetic moment of EEM ⎪ 𝒒 ⎢ ⎥
𝜕𝒑𝑖𝑗 ⎪𝑒[ 1 ]× ⎢0⎥ if 𝑗 = 1
which is determined by the current 𝐶. And the vacuum permeability =⎨ ⎢ ⎥ (16)
𝜕𝑙 ⎪ ⎣0⎦
𝜇0 is 4𝜋 × 10−7 N A−2 . 𝑹𝑥 (𝛼) and 𝑹𝑦 (𝛽) denote the rotation around the
⎪0 otherwise
𝑥-axis and the 𝑦-axis respectively, and as shown in Fig. 2(a), 𝛼 and 𝛽 ⎩
are the rotation angle to indicate the magnetic field direction. 𝑟 is the
distance between the EEM and 𝑗th IPM. Therefore:
[ ] [ ]
Through chain rule, the relationship between the position of the 𝜕𝒑11 𝜕𝒑𝑛+2
⎡ ⋯ 1 ⎤
catheter’s distal tip and the state of EEM 𝒔 = [𝑟, 𝛼, 𝛽, 𝐶] is obtained from 𝜕(𝑨𝑀 + 𝑩𝐺) ⎢ 𝜕𝑙
×
𝜕𝑙
×
⎥
=⎢ ⎥ (17)
Eqs. (5), (9) and (11): 𝜕𝑙 ⎢ ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ ⎥
⎣ 0 ⋯ 0 ⎦
𝜕𝒙 𝜕𝒙 𝜕𝒒 𝜕𝑀
𝑱𝑥𝑠 = = = 𝑱𝑥𝑞 𝑱𝑞𝑀 𝑱𝑀𝑠 (12)
𝜕𝒔 𝜕𝒒 𝜕𝑀 𝜕𝒔

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Y. Huang et al. Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072

Algorithm 1: trajectory tracking overheated, and the lower limit of the distance between the EEM and
Input : 𝒙𝑑𝑖 : a set of target points, 𝒙: current distal tip position, 𝒒: the CR was varied to verify its influence on the control performance.
current configuration of the catheter, 𝒔: state of the EEM, The 𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑑𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑔 of C++ was used to solve it. The solution is added to the
𝑙: current length of the advancement system, ||𝛥𝒙𝑙𝑖𝑚 || The current value as 𝑆 ∗ .
limit of the step size, 𝜖: tracking threshold, 𝑡𝑡ℎ : time
threshold 3.2. Admittance force control
Output: 𝒔∗ : target state of the EEM, 𝑙∗ :target length of the
advancement system Since we make a trade-off in the objective function to minimize
energy consumption, the EEM prefers to actuate the catheter from a
𝑖 = 1, 𝑡 = 0;
close distance. However, even with a lower bound set on its pose, the
while 𝑖 < 𝑘 do
EEM may still come into contact with the patient due to the irregular
𝛥𝒙 = 𝒙𝑑𝑖 − 𝒙 ;
shape and movement of the human body. Therefore, in this study, the
𝑡 = 𝑡 + 1;
Admittance control, inspired by the Spring-damper model, is applied to
if ||𝛥𝒙|| > ||𝛥𝒙𝑙𝑖𝑚 || then
𝛥𝒙||𝜟𝒙𝒍𝒊𝒎 || ensure patient safety [34].
𝛥𝒙 = ||𝛥𝒙|| ;
𝑓𝑒𝑥 = 𝑚𝑣𝑖𝑟 𝑥̈ + 𝑑𝑣𝑖𝑟 𝑥̇ + 𝑘𝑣𝑖𝑟 (𝑥 − 𝑥∗ ) (20)
if ||𝛥𝒙|| < 𝜖 or 𝑡 > 𝑡𝑡ℎ then
𝑖 = 𝑖 + 1, 𝑡 = 0; In (19), 𝑥, 𝑥,̇ and ẍ denote the current position, velocity, and
continue; acceleration of the virtual spring. 𝑥∗ is the desired position of the virtual
else spring, which is also the pose [𝑟∗ , 𝛼 ∗ , 𝛽 ∗ ] of the EEM and given by
update jacobian Matrix → 𝑱 𝑥𝑆 ; solving eq (19). 𝑓𝑒𝑥 is the external force that can be measured by a force
quadratic programming → 𝛥𝒔, 𝛥𝑙; sensor, a pose difference of the EEM is generated to achieve compliance
𝒔∗ = 𝒔 + 𝛥𝒔, 𝑙∗ = 𝑙 + 𝛥𝑙; control if the external force exists. 𝑚𝑣𝑖𝑟 is the virtual mass of the virtual
spring, and 𝑑𝑣𝑖𝑟 is the damper parameter. The stiffness parameter 𝑘𝑣𝑖𝑟
end;
decides how compliant the virtual spring will be.
̇ 𝑣𝑖𝑟 (𝑥−𝑥∗ )
𝑓𝑒𝑥 −𝑑𝑣𝑖𝑟 𝑥−𝑘
𝑥̈ = 𝑚𝑣𝑖𝑟
̈ 2
𝑥𝑡
(21)
𝛿𝑥 = 𝑥𝑡 ̇ 𝑝 + 2𝑝
𝑡𝑝 denotes the period time of the admittance control. Although the
combination of admittance control and magnetic control allows the
EEM to act like a virtual spring and be compliant during actuation,
the generated pose error of the EEM due to external forces may re-
duce magnetic actuation accuracy and extend the operation time. To
enhance magnetic actuation performance during contact, we modify
the objective function in (19) to consider the possible contact force with
the external environment as follows:
min𝛥𝑆{𝑂(𝛥𝑆) + 𝜆2 𝑃 (𝛥𝑆)
𝜆2 if 𝑓𝑒𝑥 > 0
𝜆2 =
0 otherwise (22)
{
‖𝑘𝑒𝑛 𝛥𝑟‖2 if 𝛥𝑟 < 0
𝑃 (𝛥𝑆) =
0 otherwise
where 𝑂(𝛥𝑆) is the original objective function used in Eq. (19). 𝜆2
is a trade-off coefficient used to incorporate the possible increment
Fig. 4. The setup of the Experiment.
in contact force. 𝑃 (𝛥𝑆) is the prediction of the increment in contact
force caused by the change in the EEM’s position. If the EEM moves
closer to the catheter, denoted as 𝛥𝑟 < 0, the contact force will increase
As the system’s gradient on 𝑙 is derived, the overall relationship due to the stiffness of the external environment, and 𝑘𝑒𝑛 represents the
among variables 𝑆 = [𝑟, 𝛼, 𝛽, 𝐶, 𝑙] is known, based on eq (13), (15), and estimated stiffness as cited in [35]. By introducing the prediction of the
(17). contact force in the objective function, the magnetic control scheme
[ ]
[ ] 𝜕𝒔 will adjust the control inputs during contact, thereby shortening the
𝜕𝒙 = 𝑱𝑥𝑞 𝑱𝑞𝑀 𝑱𝑀𝑠 𝑱𝑥𝑙 + 𝑱𝑥𝑞 𝑱𝑞𝑙 actuation time.
𝜕𝑙 (18)
= 𝑱𝑥𝑆 𝜕𝑆 As shown in Fig. 3, the Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control consists of
two parts: the Jacobian-based control scheme and the high-frequency
To steer the catheter to achieve position control by magnetic actu- admittance control. The admittance control runs at a minimum fre-
ation, the magnetic control is formulated as a quadratic programming quency of 100 Hz to ensure smooth and compliant operation of the
problem. At the same time, to minimize the energy consumption of the robot.
EEM, we use a coefficient 𝜆1 to make a trade-off between the supplied
current and the control accuracy, the objective function is: 4. Experiment
min𝛥𝑆 ‖𝑱𝑥𝑆 𝛥𝑆 − 𝛥𝒙‖2 + 𝜆1 ‖𝐲1𝑇 (𝑆𝑐𝑢𝑟 + 𝛥𝑆)‖2
(19) The experiment was set up as Fig. 4, and the components are listed
s.t. 𝑆𝑙𝑜𝑤 − 𝑆𝑐𝑢𝑟 < 𝛥𝑆 < 𝑆𝑢𝑝𝑝 − 𝑆𝑐𝑢𝑟
in Table 1. The magnetically-actuated catheter was built over a hollow
𝑆𝑐𝑢𝑟 is the current value of 𝑆, 𝐲1𝑇 is a masking vector used to silicone tube (Part number: T2011, QOSINA, Edgewood, NY, USA). The
select the variable corresponding to the supplied current. 𝑆𝑙𝑜𝑤 and 𝑆𝑢𝑝𝑝 outer diameter of the tubing is 1.5 mm and its inner diameter is about
denotes the lower and upper limits of 𝑆 which are artificially selected. 1 mm. 6 rigid neodymium (NdFeb) magnets were embedded inside of
The upper limit of the current was set as 16 A to prevent the EEM to be the catheter at an equal distance. The catheter was connected with a

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Y. Huang et al. Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072

Fig. 5. Control performance in three different trajectories, each repeated five times. The red line indicates the desired trajectory, while the colored dots represent the actual
position of the catheter tip.

Table 1 4.1. Experiment for the Jacobian-based control

Experimental setup and specifications.
Components Brands Specifications
In the experiment, the proposed Jacobian-based control strategy
Catheter Self-made Diameter (mm): 1.5, Length (mm): 25, was tested to track 3 different trajectories, which were quadrilateral,
Number of Magnets: 6
pentagram, and tetrahedron. We repeated each trajectory 5 times. All
Electromagnet Self-made Weight (kg): 3
these 3 trajectories were sampled to a set of reference points 𝒙𝑑𝑖 (𝑖 =
Power Supply ITECH Output Current Range(A): 20
1, … , 𝑘). During actuation, the magnetically actuated catheter followed
Robot arm ROKAE DoF: 7, Payload (kg): 5
the reference trajectory point by point. If the positional error ‖𝛥𝒙‖
Force Sensor SRI DoF: 6, Force range (N): 200
was less than the tracking threshold 𝜖 or the CR was stuck beyond a
Computer DELL Ubuntu 18.04 OS, Preempt RT
predefined time threshold 𝑡𝑡ℎ , it would be steered to the next target
point. The above process is shown in Algorithm 1. To balance the trade-
Table 2 off between tracking precision and tracking time, we set the tracking
Tracking performance on different trjaectories. threshold as 0.8 mm and the time threshold as 0.5s in the experiment.
Trjaectories RMS error (mm) IAE (mm s) Time (s) During testing, it was observed that the deformation of the nitinol
Quadrilateral 0.49 ± 0.26 18.08 42.86 wire resulting from the bending moment was insignificant due to its
Pentagram 0.48 ± 0.22 26.54 69.7 high bending stiffness. In the experiment, we disregarded the deforma-
Tetrahedron 0.43 ± 0.22 38.46 103.4
tion of the nitinol wire caused by the magnetic torque and assumed
that the guide wire can only be moved along its axial direction.
Meanwhile, we noticed that as the catheter’s length increased due to
standard nitinol wire. The catheter segment embedded with permanent its advancement from the injection point, it became more susceptible to
magnets can be bent by the external magnetic field, while the nitinol disturbances caused by changes in external forces due to the elasticity
wire allows for advancement of the catheter. of the nitinol wire. This may be attributed to the lack of additional
The EEM used in this study consisted of a set of copper coils with support points in the free space, whereas in tightly enclosed lumens,
a NdFeb magnet core. It weighs approximately 3 kg and was powered this situation would be less pronounced. To eliminate this vibration
by a programmable power supply (Model: IT6722, ITECH Corporation). during experiments, we designed a suppression coefficient to adjust
the input in the magnetic control strategy as the length of the catheter
A 7-DoF robot arm was utilized to manipulate the EEM and generate
increases.
the desired magnetic field in this study. The advancement unit was
−‖𝒙‖
composed of a stepper motor and a set of wheels. The host computer 𝜖(𝒙) = 0.4 + 0.6𝑒 10
(23)
(Model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11400F CPU, 2.60 GHz, 16 GB RAM) 𝛥𝒙 = 𝜖(𝒙)𝛥𝒙
running a Ubuntu 18.04 OS was utilized to read images from RGB
As shown in Fig. 5, the tracked position of the catheter’s distal tip
cameras positioned beneath the catheter and establish communication
and the reference trajectory were both expressed in the same frame.
with the robot arm.
The results showed that the proposed control scheme can be used for
A chessboard was attached to the end-effector of the robot arm
position steering of the catheter tip. As shown in Table 2, the proposed
and placed at various positions. These two RGB cameras recorded control scheme had RMS errors of 0.49 ± 0.26 mm, 0.48 ± 0.22 mm,
the chessboard. Subsequently, the stereoCameraCalibrator function in and 0.43 ± 0.22 mm for the three different trajectories, respectively.
MATLAB was utilized to calibrate both cameras as well as the robot This result was comparable to that of related research [28,30].
arm. The calibrated cameras were then used to reconstruct the 3D To demonstrate the impact of the sub-optimized objective on the
shape of the catheter from the captured images. In order to precisely amount of supplied current, we set the value of 𝜆1 as 0, 0.001, 0.002,
control the EEM, the pose of the EEM with respect to the catheter was and 0.003, respectively. The catheter was actuated to track trajectories
transferred to the robot arm frame. with different lengths, ranging from 20 mm to 80 mm. Since the
The experiment consisted of two parts. In the first part, an EEM catheter’s advancement length has a suppressive effect on the control
was used to remotely actuate the CR in free space. This aimed to performance, we compared the impact of 𝜆1 values on 2D and 3D
verify the accuracy of the proposed Jacobian-based control strategy in trajectories separately. During experiment, we fixed the lower bound of
steering the catheter’s distal tip to any given position and following the EEM’s position to be 55 mm to avoid the possible contact between
different trajectories. Moreover, different 𝜆1 values were tested to the EEM and experimental platform.
assess the impact of the sub-optimized objective on the amount of Experimental results are presented in Fig. 6. Fig. 6(a) compares
supplied current. The second part of the experiment aimed to test the the time consumption of the control scheme with different sets of 𝜆1 .
performance of the Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control, and the difference It shows that introducing the sub-optimized objective on the amount
between considering and not considering the possible increment in of supplied current causes no delay in the actuation time. Fig. 6(b)
external force was compared in this part. demonstrates that the sub-optimized objective significantly reduces the

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Y. Huang et al. Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072

Table 3
Comparison of the hybrid force-magnetic control and the model without force control.
Energy Actuation RMS error IAE
consumption time [s] [mm] [mm s]
[kJ]
Hybrid(with 𝜆2 ) 2.96 145.9 0.5220 ± 0.41 60.11
Hybrid(without 𝜆2 ) 3.41 177.9 0.6110 ± 0.51 89.15
Bnd. 50 mm 3.16 133.4 0.4820 ± 0.28 45.25
Bnd. 55 mm 3.88 125.8 0.4906 ± 0.28 46.40
Bnd. 60 mm 5.66 128.0 0.4936 ± 0.30 45.63
Bnd. 65 mm 8.05 123.0 0.4479 ± 0.26 41.60

To validate the Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control model, we used the

EEM to steer the catheter along the same trajectory and compared the
performance of the model with and without force control. Additionally,
We demonstrated the importance of reducing the lower bound of the
EEM’s working distance in reducing the system’s energy consumption.
For the magnetic control-only scenario, we changed the lower bound of
the EEM’s working distance from 50 mm to 65 mm. There was no limit
for the Hybrid Force-Magnetic control. Furthermore, to illustrate the
effectiveness of considering the possible increment of contact force in
the Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control model, we compared the actuation
performance between considering and not considering the possible
contact force.
As shown in Fig. 7, all control schemes can actuate the catheter
to complete the trajectory tracking. Figs. 7(a) and 7(b) illustrates
the process of magnetic control and Hybrid Force-Magnetic control
separately. The actuation details can be found in the video attachment.
According to statistical analysis, the RMS error of the hybrid model was
0.5220±0.41mm, which was slightly worse than that of the magnetic
control scheme without force control, but still sufficient for trajectory
tracking.

5. Discussion

Fig. 6. Diagrams of the impact of 𝜆1 : (a) Comparison of the actuation time of control
schemes with different 𝜆1 values for different trajectories. (b) Comparison of the energy
consumption of control schemes with different 𝜆1 values.
energy consumption of the whole system. Based on statistics, the intro-
duction of the sub-optimized objective can lead to approximately 20%
energy reduction, thereby minimizing heat generation and extending
the operational time of the system.
4.2. Experiment for the hybrid force-magnetic control
To simulate potential contact with the patient during surgery, a
5 mm thick silicone plate was fabricated as a protective shell for the
experimental platform. A 6-axis force sensor (Product ID: M3815D, SRI,
China) was installed between the robotic manipulator’s end-effector
and the bottom of the EEM, it can measure the contact force and torque
between EEM and the silicone shell and use the contact force to change
the position of the EEM and make compliant control possible. In the
experiment, we obtained the external force on the EEM by subtracting
the EEM’s gravity from the force sensor data. Based on the results of
the testing, it was found that the noise of the force sensor was below
2.0N. Therefore, during the experiment, we defined that the EEM was
in contact with the platform when the external force exceeded the noise
threshold.
Figs. 7(c) and 7(d) compares the actuation distance and power of the
EEM with and without force control respectively. The relevant data is
provided in Table 3. The results indicate that reducing the lower bound
of the driving distance results in a significant decrease in the total
energy consumption and peak power of the system. Optimally setting
the lower bound of the driving distance allows the EEM to operate at
the closest distance, thus minimizing the energy consumption of the
system. While obtaining precise knowledge of the patient’s anatomy in
clinical settings can be challenging, the movement of the patient’s body
can also pose challenges. The Hybrid Force-Magnetic control, however,
enables the EEM to adapt to the patient’s body and operate at closer
distances with lower power peak and overall energy consumption by
setting the trade-off between driving distance and current.
However, as shown in Table 3 and Fig. 7, the Hybrid Force-Magnetic
control takes longer to complete the same trajectory compared to the
scheme without force control. The previous experiment already proves
that the introduced trade-off parameter restricting the total current
causes no delay in the actuation time. The delay mainly comes from
the force control algorithm preventing the EEM from moving to the
optimal position upon contact with the platform. As shown in Fig. 7
and the video attachment, if the magnetic control strategy does not take
the contact force into account, it will try to keep the EEM close to the
catheter, which conflicts with the force control and extends the delay.
On the other hand, the control scheme that considers the possible con-
tact force adjusts the desired position of the EEM to move away from
the catheter once contact happens. It also increases the supplied current
to maintain the actuation of the CR, therefore reducing the actuation
time, as shown in Fig. 7(d). While the Hybrid Force-Magnetic control
with consideration of possible contact force still takes a bit longer than
magnetic control-only (as seen in Table 3), the delay in actuation time
has become less significant. In future clinical applications, preoperative

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Y. Huang et al. Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072

Fig. 7. Comparison of trajectory tracking performance between the magnetic control scheme and the Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control scheme, as well as the performance of the
Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control scheme with and without considering the possible contact force. (a) The tracking performance of the control scheme without force control on 2D
and 3D trajectories, the lower bound of the EEM’s working distance is 65 mm. (b) Tracking performance of the Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control scheme on 2D and 3D trajectories,
considering the possible contact force. (c) Comparison of the system’s actuation distances on the 3D trajectory. (d) Comparison of the system’s power consumption 𝑃 = 𝐶 2 𝑅 on
the 3D trajectory, where 𝐶 is the output current of the power supply and R is the resistance of the EEM. (e) records the normal force data collected by the force sensor in the
experiment. Further details are provided in the video attachment.

planning can be used to reduce potential contact and further minimize
actuation time.
Fig. 7(e) records the normal force collected by the force sensor
during the experiment. Comparison of Fig. 7(c) and Fig. 7(e) shows
that the Hybrid Force-Magnetic control is able to control the EEM
appropriately away from the silicone plate when contact occurs. The
maximum contact force during the experiment was less than 15N,
which is below the maximum force recommended for ultrasound scan-
ning on patients [36]. This demonstrates that the proposed scheme
allows for compliant contact between the EEM and the patient.
6. Conclusion
This paper has presented a Hybrid Magnetic-Force Control scheme
combining a Jacobian-based control scheme and the Admittance Con-
trol. The proposed control scheme transforms the magnetic control of
the catheter into a multi-objective optimization problem by introducing
a sub-optimized objective on the amount of supplied current. This
allows for precise 3D trajectory tracking of the magnetic catheter
with reduced energy consumption. Experimental results proved that
the proposed scheme enables 3D trajectory tracking with an accuracy
of up to 0.43 ± 0.22mm. Furthermore, the proposed scheme signifi-
cantly reduces the system’s energy consumption by approximately 20%,
while maintaining similar tracking precision. This reduction in energy
consumption is especially advantageous as it reduces the generation
of heat, allowing for an extended working time without the risk of
overheating.
Moreover, the proposed Hybrid Force-Magnetic Control enables
compliant contact between the EEM and the patient, thereby reducing
the risk of accidental injury during surgical procedures. Additionally, it
further reduces the system’s energy consumption as it allows the EEM
to actuate the CR from a close distance. To reduce the delay in actuation
time caused by contact between the EEM and the patient, we introduce
a sub-optimized objective of minimizing the possible increment in con-
tact force to the Hybrid Force-Magnetic control scheme. This objective
predicts the potential increment in contact force and moves the EEM
away from the patient once contact occurs, while still maintaining the
actuation of the CR. This sub-optimized objective reduces actuation
time by 17.9% when contact is present.
In future studies, further research will focus on giving the catheter
more diverse motion modes so that it can adapt to more complex
environments. Although it has been proven that the proposed control
scheme can drive the catheter for position control, Optimizing the
modeling of catheter kinematics, making its control more accurate, and
realizing effective intervention will continue to be a research direction
in the future.

8
Y. Huang et al.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yuanrui Huang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Vali-
dation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – origi-
nal draft, Visualization. Runyu Ma: Validation, Investigation, Writing
– review & editing. Hongbin Liu: Conceptualization, Writing – re-
view & editing, Resources, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Project
administration.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
No data was used for the research described in the article.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Institute of Automation, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, and the InnoHK programme.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found online
at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2023.103072.
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Yuanrui Huang received the M.Sc. in Intelligent Systems
from King’s College London and the B.Eng in Electronic
Information Engineering from Chongqing University, China.
He is currently working towards Ph.D degree with the
School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese
Academy of Sciences, and also with the State Key Labora-
tory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Institute
of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His current
research interests include robust and intelligent control for
magnetic microrobots and medical devices.
10
Mechatronics 95 (2023) 103072
Runyu Ma received the B.Eng from the School of Gen-
eral Engineering at Beihang University, China . He is
currently working towards Master degree with Department
of Cognitive Robotics, Delft University of Technology, The
Netherlands. His current research interests include the
autonomous control and machine learning for robotics.
Hongbin Liu is a Professor at Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Institute of Automation (CASIA), Executive Deputy Director
for the Centre of AI and Robotics (CAIR), Hong Kong
Institute of Science & Innovation, Chinese Academy of
Sciences. Dr Liu is also an adjunct Reader and director of the
Haptic Mechatronics and Medical Robotics (HaMMeR) lab at
the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences,
King’s College London (KCL), UK. Dr Liu’s group has been
focusing on research and development of medical robotic
systems with advanced haptic perception and interaction
capabilities, to enable safer and more effective minimally
invasive diagnosis and treatment for patients. Dr Liu’s
research has led to the clinical translation of a series of
flexible robotic endoscopic systems for applications such as
colonoscopy, bronchoscopy as well as vascular surgeries. Dr
Liu received Ph.D. degree from King’s College London in
2010, and published over 110 peer-reviewed articles with a
H-index 39.