Design of a novel robotic system for minimally invasive surgery

Purpose Robot-assisted system for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has been attracting more and more attentions. Compared with a traditional MIS, the robot-assisted system for MIS is able to overcome or reduce defects, such as poor hand-eye coordination, heavy labour intensity and limited motion of the instrument. The purpose of this paper is to design a novel robotic system for MIS applications. Design/methodology/approach A robotic system with three separate slave arms for MIS has been designed. In the proposed robot, a new mechanism was designed as the remote centre motion (RCM) mechanism to restrain the movement of instrument or laparoscope around the incision. Moreover, an improved instrument without coupling motion between wrist and grippers was developed to enhance its manipulability. A control system architecture was also developed, and an intuitive control method was applied to realize hand-eye coordination of the operator. Findings For the RCM mechanism, the workspace was analyzed and the positioning accuracy of the remote centre point was tested. The results show that the RCM mechanism can be applied to MIS. Furthermore, the master-slave trajectory tracking experiments reveal that slave robots are able to follow the movement of the master manipulators well. Finally, the feasibility of the robot-assisted system for MIS is proved by performing animal experiments successfully. Originality/value This paper offers a novel robotic system for MIS. It can accomplish the anticipated results.