Root Canal Therapy Assisted Robot System

A robot aided system for root canal therapy was developed, which realized image registration, intra-operative visual navigation, human-robot cooperative compliance control and robot drilling safety constraints. First, image registration includes two parts: using the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) to register the point cloud of Cone-Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) image and oral scanning image, and using the method based on feature points to register the oral scanning model and visual space. Then, the transformation from the robot flange frame to the dental drill frame was obtained through robot hand-eye calibration, and the image space was connected to the visual space using a binocular vision system, thus realizing visual navigation. Finally, the admittance control was used to guide the robot to locate the root canal orifice, and a linear virtual fixture was applied to constrain the drilling direction. The results of surgical navigation experiment and model drilling experiment show that the image registration error is less than 1mm, the robot drilling position error is less than 1 mm, and the angle error is about 5 degrees, which meets the clinical accuracy requirements.