Snake robots offer considerable potential for endoscopic interventions due to their ability to follow curvilinear paths. Telemanipulation is an open problem due to hyper-redundancy, as input devices only allow a specification of six degrees of freedom. Our work addresses this by presenting a unified telemanipulation strategy which enables follow-the-leader locomotion and reorientation keeping the shape change as small as possible. The basis for this is a novel shape-fitting approach for solving the inverse kinematics in only a few milliseconds. Shape fitting is performed by maximizing the similarity of two curves using Fr\'echet distance while simultaneously specifying the position and orientation of the end effector. Telemanipulation performance is investigated in a study in which 14 participants controlled a simulated snake robot to locomote into the target area. In a final validation, pivot reorientation within the target area is addressed.

翻译：蛇形机器人因其能够沿曲线路径运动，在内窥镜介入领域具有显著潜力。由于超冗余特性，输入设备仅允许指定六个自由度，遥操作仍是一个开放性问题。本工作通过提出一种统一的遥操作策略来解决该问题，该策略能够实现最小化形状变化下的跟随领导者运动与重定向。该策略的基础是一种新型形状拟合方法，可在数毫秒内求解逆运动学。形状拟合通过使用弗雷歇距离最大化两条曲线的相似性，同时指定末端执行器的位置和朝向来实现。在一项包含14名受试者的研究中，我们验证了遥操作性能，受试者需操控仿真蛇形机器人运动至目标区域。最终验证阶段，我们针对目标区域内的枢轴重定向操作进行了测试。