Parallel Position/Force Control of Epicardial Wire Robot Based on Ellipsoid Geodesy

Gene therapies are emerging as an increasingly promising treatment for congestive heart failure. However, their effectiveness is linked to the method for delivery to the target region of the heart. Current methods lack an approach for minimally invasive, uniform delivery. To address this need we developed Cerberus, a minimally invasive parallel wire robot for cardiac interventions. Accurate and safe interventions using this device require regulation of force in addition to injector position. Prior work on Cerberus involved developing and implementing a parallel position/ force controller for a simplified planar model. This work adapts the Cerberus robot to explore the effectiveness of a control approach that accounts more realistically for the geometry of the heart by modeling it as a prolate ellipsoid.