Design and Realization of a Robotic Manipulator for Minimally Invasive Surgery With Replaceable Surgical Tools
Sajid Nisar, Asad Hameed, Nabeel Kamal, Osman Hasan, Fumitoshi Matsuno
Abstract
Minimally invasive surgery is a useful but challenging surgical technique. Several robotic manipulators have been realized in the past three decades to overcome its difficulties. However, a majority of these manipulators lack two important features. First, the ability to provide a right-angled tool entry (with respect to the surrounding skin tissue) for entry-ports located on the far-side of the patient's body, and second, rapid change of the surgical tools. To solve these issues, this article presents synthesis of a new surgical manipulator that ensures a right-angled tool entry-in order to reduce postoperative pain in the patient's skin tissue-through its novel design. We describe the design, perform kinematic analysis, and validate the robotic manipulator's ability to maintain a remote center of motion. The proposed manipulator is equipped with a quick-release mechanism to facilitate rapid change of the surgical instruments during robot-assisted surgery. Contrary to the state-of-the-art, the proposed manipulator does not require extra passive arms to provide a proper tool entry-angle. The manipulator's performance is experimentally evaluated by performing tool-insertion, pegs-transfer, and path-following tasks in a master-slave teleoperation setting. It is demonstrated that the manipulator can perform basic surgical tasks, such as pick-and-place and object manipulation, with a high success rate.