Patent ID: 8523765

Claim:
A medical control apparatus comprising: a bending portion, provided to a distal end side of an insertion portion of a medical device, comprising a plurality of link members which can be brought into a straight state and which are consecutively provided so as to be rotationally movable; a driving section adapted to drive bending movements of the bending portion by rotationally moving the plurality of link members; a designating section adapted to designate at least one of the plurality of link members; a control section adapted to compute respective angles of the plurality of link members, and to control the driving section to rotationally move the plurality of link members based on the computation results; and a setting section adapted to set a parameter to prevent angles formed between the adjacent link members among the plurality of link members from assuming an acute angle exceeding a preset moveable range when computing the angles formed between respective adjacent link members, and to inhibit the bending movements by the driving section as the angles formed between the adjacent link members approaches the limit of the moveable range, wherein the designating section designates positions and orientations of the link members at a distal most end side in the plurality of link members, and wherein the control section: obtains a coordinate position of the link member at a distal most end side in a predetermined two or three dimensional space at the time the link member at the distal most end side in the plurality of link members was designated, obtains a direction of the link member at the distal most end side in the obtained coordinate position, and controls the driving section based on the obtained coordinate position of the link member at the distal most end side, the obtained direction of the link member at the distal most end side at the obtained coordinate position, and the parameter set by the setting section, such that respective angles of the plurality of link members are computed so that other link members contiguous to the link member at the distal most end side are oriented in the obtained direction when the other link members pass through the obtained coordinate position and the plurality of link members are rotationally moved based on the computation results, by performing computation to determine the positions of the link members at the distal most end side by decomposing a matrix space that shows a dynamic relationship between an acceleration of the positions of the link members at the distal most end side and an acceleration of each of the plurality of link members into a kernel space and a null space, when solving kinematics of a restraint condition of each of the link members.