Chunwoo Kim, undefinedRyu, Seok ChangDupont, Pierre2017-09-122015Kim, Chunwoo, Seok Chang Ryu, and Pierre E. Dupont. 2015. "Real-time adaptive kinematic model estimation of concentric tube robots." In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 3214-3219.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33884328Kinematic models of concentric tube robots have matured from considering only tube bending to considering tube twisting as well as external loading. While these models have been demonstrated to approximate actual behavior, modeling error can be significant for medical applications that often call for positioning accuracy of 1–2mm. As an alternative to moving to more complex models, this paper proposes using sensing to adaptively update model parameters during robot operation. Advantages of this method are that the model is constantly tuning itself to provide high accuracy in the region of the workspace where it is currently operating. It also adapts automatically to changes in robot shape and compliance associated with the insertion and removal of tools through its lumen. As an initial exploration of this approach, a recursive on-line estimator is proposed and evaluated experimentally.en-USJournal Article2017-09-1210.1109/IROS.2015.7353823