Ultrasound scanning robots enable the automatic imaging of a patient's internal organs by maintaining close contact between the ultrasound probe and the patient's body during a scanning procedure. Comprehensive, high-quality ultrasound scans are essential for providing the patient with an accurate diagnosis and effective treatment plan. An ultrasound scanning robot usually works in a doctor-robot co-existing environment, hence both efficiency and safety during the collaboration should be considered. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-modal control scheme for ultrasound scanning robots, in which three interaction modes are integrated into a single control input. Specifically, the scanning mode drives the robot to track a time-varying trajectory on the patient's body under the desired impedance model; the recovery mode allows the robot to actively recontact the body whenever physical contact between the ultrasound probe and the patient's body is lost; the human-guided mode renders the robot passive such that the doctor can safely intervene to manually reposition the probe. The integration of multiple modes allows the doctor to intervene safely at any time during the task and also maximizes the robot's autonomous scanning ability. The performance of the robot is validated on a collaborative scanning task of a carotid artery examination.

翻译：超声扫描机器人通过在扫描过程中保持超声探头与患者身体的紧密接触，实现对患者内部器官的自动成像。全面、高质量的超声扫描对于为患者提供准确的诊断和有效的治疗方案至关重要。超声扫描机器人通常工作在医-机共存环境中，因此协作过程中的效率与安全性均需考量。本文提出一种面向超声扫描机器人的新型多模态控制方案，将三种交互模式集成于单一控制输入中。具体而言，扫描模式驱动机器人在期望阻抗模型下追踪患者体表的时变轨迹；恢复模式允许机器人在超声探头与患者身体失去物理接触时主动重新建立接触；人机引导模式使机器人呈被动特性，使医生能够安全介入并手动重新定位探头。多模式集成使医生在任务执行全周期内可随时安全介入，同时最大化机器人的自主扫描能力。通过颈动脉检查的协作扫描任务验证了该机器人的性能。