Kinematic Analysis to Design Parallel Robot for Clinical Applications in Laparoscopic Surgery

Abstract

Laparoscopic surgery is a minimally invasive surgical technique involving small keyhole incisions (0.5 to 1.5 cm)in the abdomen, which allows the insertion of a laparoscope and surgical instruments to perform the surgery whileimages are monitored from inside the abdomen. Currently, active studies regarding surgical robots are increasingowing to the increasing number of robotic applications. Most conventional surgical robots use serial mechanisms toachieve greater flexibility in the workspace. However, considering the payload of the robot end-effector, the robotmust be large; additionally, because of its large range of motion, it is susceptible to collision or interference withthe surgeon. Therefore, surgery is performed with the surgeon and robot separated, i.e., each is assigned anindependent space; however, this renders is difficult to provide immediate response when a problem occurs duringsurgery. Herein, we propose a kinematic analysis solution for the design of a miniaturized parallel laparoscopicsurgical robot. In the kinematic analysis of a laparoscopic surgical robot, the surgical tool becomes an end-effector. Analyses of the kinematics and simulation results show that the error values converge to zero, thus demonstratingthe validity of the proposed kinematics.