Development and Evaluation of Trajectory Planning and Control Strategies for two 6-Axis Robotic Arms in an Ex-Vivo Larynx Environment

In the Division of Phoniatrics and Pediatric Audiology at the University Hospital Erlangen, the fundamentals of human voice production are investigated experimentally. For this purpose, the vocal folds of excised animal and human cadaver larynges are stimulated to vibrate under controlled laboratory conditions. One of the key objectives is to reproduce the positioning of the cartilage apparatus as realistically as possible. The essential components are the arytenoid cartilages, which control movement and positioning of the vocal folds during phonation. The aim of this work is to develop an automated system for controlling arytenoid cartilage movement and generating three-dimensional trajectories using two robot arms. The master thesis will be supervised in collaboration with the Phoniatrics Division of the ENT Clinic (Dr. rer. nat. Helena Vulić). Experimental validation and measurements will be conducted on porcine larynges.

More information can be found here.