Deep Reinforcement Learning for Concentric Tube Robot Path Following

As surgical interventions trend towards minimally invasive approaches, Concentric Tube Robots (CTRs) have been explored for various interventions such as brain, eye, fetoscopic, lung, cardiac, and prostate surgeries. Arranged concentrically, each tube is rotated and translated independently to move the robot end-effector position, making kinematics and control challenging. Classical model-based approaches have been previously investigated with developments in deep learning-based approaches outperforming more classical approaches in both forward kinematics and shape estimation. We propose a deep reinforcement learning approach to control where we generalize across two to four systems, an element not yet achieved in any other deep learning approach for CTRs. In this way, we explore the likely robustness of the control approach. Also investigated is the impact of rotational constraints applied on tube actuation and the effects on error metrics. We evaluate inverse kinematics errors and tracking errors for path-following tasks and compare the results to those achieved using state-of-the-art methods. Additionally, as current results are performed in simulation, we also investigate a domain transfer approach known as domain randomization and evaluate error metrics as an initial step toward hardware implementation. Finally, we compare our method to a Jacobian approach found in the literature.