"Automated needle steering in soft tissue" is an open problem in both surgery robotics and formal verification. Challenges that are common to both fields include the interaction between needle and tissue, which depends on the coupled effects of needle deflection, friction and force, and tissue deformation; navigation, collision avoidance, and path planning, which are faced with inhomogeneous, partially unknown tissue; and also adaptive updates and feedback, which are required in real time. For each experiment, we record the feed of the needle in millimeters, the x, y, and z position of the needle in millimeters, and the rotation angle of the alignment of the angled needle tip in degree. The setup allows the needle to be pushed forwards and backward in the y direction. The experiments we restrict to a two-dimensional setting, but three-dimensional position data are recorded. Accordingly, we execute only motion plans with half rotations by 180 degree rotations. We do not execute motion plans with backward movement. Also, we do not allow more than two rotations within one motion plan.
