Adaptive Observer-based Controller Design for a Class of Nonlinear

Systems with Application to Image Guided Control of Steerable Needles

M. Motaharifar, H.A. Talebi, A. Afshar, and F. Abdollahi
AbstractFlexible needles with a bevel tip (steerable needles)
promise to enhance targeting accuracy and maneuver inside the
human body in order to avoid collision with delicate organs.
Contributing image feedback to needle insertion tasks greatly
improves such objectives. An important issue in 2D motion
planning tasks is stabilizing the needle in a desired plane. Any
divergence from the plane leads to the inefciency of the motion
planning scheme. Hence, a control scheme is proposed in this
paper which guides the needle to a desired plane. The system
of such task is subject to parametric uncertainty. Although the
original system is linearly parametrized, the feedback linearized
form is not, which prevents the application of conventional
adaptive control schemes. Moreover, all state variables of the
system could not be measured and a nonlinear observer is
necessary to observe the system states. In this paper, the
previously proposed adaptive state feedback controller for such
systems is modied to an adaptive output feedback controller
and the proposed scheme is applied to the problem of needle
guidance. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the
enhanced performance of the proposed controller methodology
as compared to previously proposed feedback linearization
scheme.
I. INTRODUCTION
Needle insertion into soft tissue is a widespread surgical
technique that has numerous applications in medical tasks
such as brachytherapy, anesthesia, biopsy, etc. Accurately
placing the needle is a key factor that determines the effec-
tiveness of the treatment. Moreover, the needle should avoid
collision with some sensitive organs such as nerves, bones
or vessels to prevent subsequent complications.
The traditional rigid needles have a little manoeuvrability
in the tissue. Motion planning for such needles just involve
optimization of initial parameters such as needle starting
insertion point, heading angle, etc [1],[2]. On the other hand,
exible needles have more manoeuvrability than the rigid
ones and can be manipulated during the insertion to guide
through tissue. A class of exible needles with a bevel-tip
have attracted great attention during the past several years.
Indeed, the asymmetry of the tip causes the needle to bend
and follow a circular arc with constant curvature[3]. There-
fore, with appropriate rotation of the needle from the base,
the desired trajectory could be achieved. A mathematical
nonholonomic needle steering model has been developed
and validated in [4] for such needles. The proposed model
was a generalization of the standard 3 DOF nonholonomic
unicycle and bicycle models to 6 DOF using Lie group
theory. Based on this model, some motion planning algo-
rithms have been proposed for this class of needles using
The authors are with Electrical Engineering Department, Amirkabir
university of Technology , Tehran, Iran, email: {md.motaharifar,
alit, aafshar, f abdollahi}@aut.ac.ir
Stochastic Motion Roadmap [5], inverse kinematics [6],
screw-based motion planning [7], and Rapidely-exploring
Random Trees(RRT) [8]. In [9], a motion planning approach
was proposed based on fast duty cycle spinning of the needle
in order to remove the limitation of a xed curvature path.
Since a continuous spinning increases patient trauma, this
method is not appropriate for clinical diagnosis. On the other
hand, manual needle insertion using master-slave devices
is another area of research. In [10], the performance of
manual teleoperation scheme was compared to that of an
automatic needle insertion technique and it was shown that
the hybrid control provided improved accuracy. A review on
some research of needle insertion strategies was given in
[11].
Guiding and stabilizing a exible needle to a desired plane
is a rst step in 2D motion planning. In [12], a feedback
linearization controller was employed to do such task. The
proposed controller was based on the reduced order system of
the nonholonomic needle steering model introduced in [4].
Such model, however, is subject to parametric uncertainty
and the feedback linearization controller cannot tolerate
uncertainties. In [13], a way of combining such controllers
with a previously proposed motion planning algorithm has
been presented. Moreover, this class of controllers have the
ability to combine with manual teleoperated insertions.
In this paper, an adaptive output feedback controller is
proposed for guiding exible needles to a desired plane.
The needle steering model considered here belongs to a
special class of nonlinear systems which the original system
is linearly parametrized but the canonical form is not. The
traditional approaches for adaptive output feedback controller
design (e. g. [14], [15]) cannot be applied to a system
unless its canonical form model is linearly parametrized.
Moreover, the unmeasured states of the system have to be
estimated. Some adaptive state feedback controllers were
proposed for this class of nonlinear systems (e. g. [16],[17]).
However, those adaptive control schemes rely on full state
measurement and to the best of our knowledge no work with
adaptive output feedback controller has been proposed for
this class of nonlinear systems. The proposed controller is
a combination of the state feedback controller proposed in
[16] with high gain observers after some modications. As
will be explained in Section III, some complexities emerge in
case of designing an adaptive output feedback version based
on the approach stated in [16]. First, this method is based on
an auxiliary dynamic equation with some properties which
simplify the design. In case of existing unmeasured state
variables, the auxiliary dynamic does not have the simplier
2012 American Control Conference
Fairmont Queen Elizabeth, Montral, Canada
June 27-June 29, 2012
978-1-4577-1096-4/12/$26.00 2012 AACC 4849
properties which complicates the design. Moreover, some
complexities occur in dealing with the lyapunov function.
The applied controller has the ability in online estimation of
needle curvature. This parameter depends on the needle and
the tissue. The previous work [4] estimates this parameter
off-line using trial and error strategy with some experiments.
Since inserting the needle into the patients body for so many
times is dangerous for the patients health, this method is not
applicable for clinical activities. In brief, the contribution
of this paper is twofold. First designing an adaptive output
feedback for a class of nonlinear systems which the original
(not canonical form) model is linearly parametrized and
output feedback linearizable. Second, estimation of needle
curvature in medical tasks online.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section
II, the System dynamics is described. Our proposed adaptive
observer-based controller is presented in Section III. Section
IV depicts simulation results of the proposed methodology.
Finally, the conclusions are stated in Section V.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION AND MODEL
A exible bevel-tip needle can be steered by rotation
and insertion at the base outside the body of the patient.
Such a needle bends as it is inserted into tissue at a
constant curvature, which is a property of the needle and
tissue. Hence, by rotating the needle from the base, different
trajectories could be achieved.
A kinematic bicycle model is developed for such a needle
in [4]. Based on this model, a reduced order model is
extracted for stabilizing the needle to a desired plane in [12].
This model is reproduced here for reader convenience.
Fig. 1 shows the kinematic bicycle model. In this model,
frame A is the reference frame and frames B and C are
attached to the two wheels of the bicycle. Utilizing Lie-
group theory, a coordinate-free differential kinematic model
is found [4].

= u
1
V
1
+u
2
V
2
(1)
where v, R
3
denote the linear and angular velocities of
the needle tip, respectively, written relative to frame A. u
1
and u
2
are the insertion and rotation speed of the needle,
and
V
1
=

e
3
e
1

and V
2
=

0
33
e
3

(2)
The unit vectors e
i
, i = 1, 2, 3 are the standard basis. Let
q = [x, y, z, , , ] be the position and orientation vector of
the needle tip where x, y,and z are position relative to the
reference frame, is the yaw of the needle in the plane, is
the pitch of the needle out of the plane, and is the roll of
the needle. Moreover, denotes the curvature which needle
follows. Body frame velocity may be expressed as

= J q (3)
Fig. 1. Kinematic bicycle model [4] used with permission from the authors
where
J =

R
T
AB
0
33
0
33
S

S =

cos cos sin 0

cos sin cos 0
sin 0 1

(4)
where R
AB
is the rotation matrix between frames A and
B. Now, using (1) and (3) the exible bevel-tip needle model
is
q = J
1
V
1
u
1
+J
1
V
2
u
2
=

sin 0
cos sin 0
cos cos 0
cos sec 0
sin 0
cos tan 1

u
1
u
2

(5)
In order to stabilize the needle to the yz plane, the states
y, z, and need not be controlled. Moreover, these states do
not affect the dynamics of the remaining states. Hence, we
can dene p
T
= [p
1
, p
2
, p
3
] = [x, , ] as the state vector
of the reduced order system, which can be represented as
follows.
p = f(p)u
1
+g(p)u
2
=

sin(p
2
)
sin(p
3
)
cos(p
3
) tan(p
2
)

u
1
+

0
0
1

u
2
(6)
r = h(p) = p
1
(7)
Note that p
T
=

0 0 0

is the desired equilibrium point

of the system which corresponds with placing the needle in
y z plane. we divide both sides of (8) by u
1
. Hence, the
system is reparametrized in terms of insertion distance, l.
Note that wherever we write p, we mean
dp
dl
. In other words,
the insertion distance is substituted for t as the independent
variable and its derivative u
1
is no longer an input signal.
Indeed, The resulted system is [12]
p =

sin(p
2
)
sin(p
3
)
cos(p
3
) tan(p
2
)

0
0
1

u (8)
4850
where u =
u2
u1
r = h(p) = p
1
(9)
In essence, we can only measure p
1
= x by image
processing and the other state variables should be estimated.
Furthermore, the parameter is the unknown curvature of
the needle which should be estimated.
The system (8) and (9) can be transformed into output
feedback linearized form using the following transformations
[19]
w = [h(p), L
f
h(p), L
2
f
h(p)]
= [p
1
, sin p
2
, cos p
2
sin p
3
]
(10)
v = L
3
f
h(p) +L
g
L
2
f
h(p)u
=
2
sin p
2
+cos p
2
cos p
3
u
(11)
where L
f
h(p) is the Lie derivative of h with respect to f,
dened by [19]
L
f
h(p) =
h(p)
p
f(p) (12)
Indeed, this is the familiar notation of the derivative of h
along the trajectories of the system p = f(p). Moreover, in
a similar manner we have
L
g
L
f
h(p) =
L
f
h(p)
p
g(p) (13)
L
k
f
h(p) =
L
k1
f
h(p)
p
f(p) (14)
Now, the transformed system is
w = Aw +Bv =

0 1 0
0 0 1
0 0 0

w +

0
0
1

v (15)
r = Cw =

1 0 0

w (16)
Obviously, the system (15) and (16) is not linearly
parametrized. Therefore, the traditional Model Reference
Adaptive Control (MRAC) [20] cannot be applied to it.
III. THE PROPOSED SCHEME
Consider a nonlinear system, subjected to parametric un-
certainty, described as
x = f(x, u, ) = f
0
(x, u) +f
T
1
(x, u) (17)
y = h(x, u) (18)
where x R
n
is the state vector, u R
m
is the control
input vector, and R
p
is the parameter vector. Moreover,
f
0
and f
1
are known nonlinear functions. Obviously, the
system (8) and (9) can be stated as (17) and (18). Our
objective is to design an adaptive controller-observer pair
for the above system such that the stability is preserved
and tracking a reference signal x
d
(t) is achieved in the
presence of unknown parameter vector . In order to do so,
the adaptive controller given in [16] is combined with a
nonlinear high gain observer with some modications.
Assumption: There exist
(a)a Hurwitz matrix A
(b)an open set D
x
R
n
containing x
d
(t) for all t
(c)an open set D

R
p
containing
(d)a family of parametrized diffeomorphisms
W : D
x
R
n
: z = W(x,

) (19)
exists where

is an estimation of and such that the
following implicit equation in the unknown u
W
x
(x,

)[f
0
(x, u) +f
T
1
(x, u)]
=
W
x
(x
d
,

) x
d
A[W(x
d
,

) W(x,

)] (20)
has a unique bounded solution u = u
a
(x, x
d
,

) for all x
D
x
. Now, taking the derivative of z we have
z =
W
x
(x,

)[f
0
(x, u) +f
T
1
(x, u)] +
W

(x,

)

(21)
The previous equation is equal to
z = g
0
(x, u,

) +g
T
1
(x, u,

) +g
2
(x,

)

(22)
where
g
0
(x, u,

) =
W
x
(x,

)f
0
(23)
g
T
1
(x, u,

) =
W
x
(x,

)f
T
1
(24)
g
T
2
(x,

) =
W

(x,

) (25)
Transformation (19) should convert the system (17) and
(18) to normal form. Indeed,
z = z +B(x, u)
y = Cz
(26)
where
=

0 1 0
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
0 0 1
0 0 0

B
T
=

0 0 1

C =

1 0 0

(27)
A high gain observer can be designed for the above system
as [19]

z = z +B
0
(x, u) +H(y y)
y = C z
(28)
where z is the estimation of z. The observer gain H is chosen
as
H
T
=

2

n

(29)
where is a positive constant to be specied and the positive
constants
i
are chosen such that the roots of
s
n
+
1
s
n1
+ +
n1
s +
n
= 0 (30)
are in the left-half plane. The function
0
(x, u) is a nominal
model of (x, u). The observer error is in the following form

z = z +B(x, u) HC z (31)
4851
where z = z z and (x, u) = (x, u)
0
(x, u). The above
equation is equal to

z = A
o,
z +B(x, u) (32)
where
A
o,
=

1 0
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

n1

n1
0 1

n
0 0

(33)
Lemma 1 [18]: For the matrix E = diag(1, , ...,
n1
), we
have the following facts:
(a)
A
o,
=
1

E
1
A
o
E, B =
1

E
1
B

(34)
where
A
o
=

1
1 0
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

n1
0 1

n
0 0

B
T

0 0
n

(35)
(b) Let the positive denite matrix S be the solution of
A
T
o
S +SA
o
= Q, then
A
T
o,
S

+S

A
o,
=
1

E
T
QE (36)
where S

= E
T
SE
In order to nd an adaptation law, the dynamic equation
(22) should be stated in terms of observed states.
z = g
0
( x, u,

)+g
T
1
( x, u,

)+g
2
( x,

)

+
1
(x, x, u) (37)
where the denition of g
i
for i = 0, 1, 2 is similar to those
stated in (23) , (24) and (25) and
1
(x, x, u) is a bounded
uncertainty. Adaptation law can be stated as follows

= g
0
( x, u,

) +g
T
1
( x, u,

)

+[g
T
2
( x,

)g
1
( x, u,

)P ][z ]
(38)

= g
1
( x, u,

)P[W( x, ) ]
(39)
where is the auxiliary variable. Moreover, is an arbitrary
Hurwitz matrix and the positive denite symmetric gain
matrix P is the solution of the following Lyapunov equation.

T
P +P = Q (40)
where Q is an arbitrary positive denite matrix.
The special statement of (37) and denition (38) will make
the proof of the proposed approach possible. Now, the error
system can be written as

g
T
1
( x, u, ) 0
g
1
(x, u, )P 0 0
0 0 A
0

1
(x, x, u)
0

2
(x, x, u)

(41)
where

= z ,

=

Assumption: It is assumed that

1
= sup[
1
(x, x, u)] (42)

2
= sup[
2
(x, x, u)] (43)
Theorem 1: For the error system (41),

,

and z are
bounded. Moreover, the tracking error is bounded.
Proof: The following Lyapunov function is considered for
the system
V (

,

, z) =

T
P

+

T
+ z
T
S z (44)
By computing the derivative of (44) and using lemma 1 we
have

V =

T
Q

+ 2

T
P
1
(x, x, u)
1

z
T
E
T
QE z
+
2

(x, x, u)B
T

S z
(45)
then we can state

V ||

||
2
(
min
(Q) 2
||P||1
||

||
)
|| z

||
2
(
min
(Q)
2
n
2||S||
|| z||
)
(46)
where z

= E z. For any positive that || z|| there exists

a positive in the following range

n
<
min(Q)
22||S||
(47)
such that the derivative of the lyapunov function is negative,
provided that
||

|| 2
||P||1
min(Q)
(48)
Since the derivative of the Lyapunov function is negative
outside a region, the system response cannot go outside of
this region. Indeed, the error is ultimately bounded.
Now, let e = z
d
z be the tracking error. It can be simply
founded that e is the output of the following lter
= A + ( A+
3
(x, x, u, ))

(49)
e =

(50)
The uncertain term
3
(x, x, u, )) come from the obser-
vation error and the other terms that do not cancel by the
control signal. It is assumed that this term is bounded. Since
the lter (49) and (50) is stable and its input is bounded, the
tracking error, which is the output of the lter, is bounded.
In brief, in order to utilize the proposed control method-
ology, the following steps are required. First, The system
should be stated as (17) and (18). Then, an appropriate
diffeomorphism should be found using nonlinear control
theories to transform the system in the form of (22). Finally,
the observer and adaptation law are designed using (28), and
(38) and (39), respectively.
4852
(a) First state variable (p
1
= x).
(b) Second state variable (p
2
= ).
(c) Third state variable (p
3
= ).
Fig. 2. Simulation results of the needle guidance problem with previously
proposed output feedback linearization method of [12].
(a) First state variable (p
1
= x).
(b) Second state variable (p
2
= ).
(c) Third state variable (p
3
= ).
Fig. 3. Simulation results of the needle guidance problem with the output
feedback adaptive control method proposed in this paper.
4853
Fig. 4. The estimation of needle curvature ()
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
The proposed adaptive output feedback controller is em-
ployed to solve the problem of guiding a exible bevel-tip
needle into a desired plane. The response of the system
is studied for two cases, rst by applying the observer-
based controller proposed in [12] and second by applying the
proposed controller. In both cases the real needle curvature
is = 0.06 but our knowledge about this parameter is not
exact. The known needle curvature is = 0.04. The initial
conditions for the both cases are X
0
= [0.1, 0.2, 0.8]
T
.
In Fig. 2, the responses of the system with observer-
based controller [12] are shown. Since, with this controller
no parameter uncertainty is tolerated, the system response
should not be acceptable. Simulation results prove this
fact. In Fig. 3, the responses of the system with proposed
controller are plotted. This gure shows the good stability
and convergence of the adaptive output feedback controller.
All state variables go near zero after a transient state. The
estimated needle curvature is shown in Fig. 4. Although this
parameter converges to a value, the converged value is not
the real one. This problem is not surprising, in that it can
be predicted theoretically from the given facts of Section
III. Since the error is ultimately bounded, we know that the
parameters just converge to a value. It is not any necessity
that the converged value be the real parameter.
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
In this paper a novel observer-based controller is pro-
posed for a class of nonlinear systems which are linearly
parametrized and feedback linearizable. The proposed strat-
egy is a modied version of a previously proposed adaptive
control scheme using high gain observer. The proposed
methodology is employed to guide a exible bevel-tip needle
into a desired plane. A nonholonomic reduced order model
is considered for the needle which the needle curvature is
its only parameter. By utilizing the adaptive control, it is
possible to estimate the needle curvature in medical tasks
online. Through simulation results, it was demonstrated that
the proposed approach is quite effective for steering medical
needles into a desired plane.
Our next step is to evaluate the proposed methodology
with real data. One formidable barrier to achieve a good
performance in image guided tasks is measurement noise.
A more improved methodology can be proposed which
tolerates this barrier. The presented approach can also be
used with the automatic or manual path planning schemes.
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