Design and development of a 5 DOFs robotic surgical instrument with a force feedback for RAMIS

Abstract

In this paper we report the conceptual design, fabrication and validation of a surgical robotic instrument for robotic assisted minimally invasive surgery. Medical practitioners are involved in all the phases of the interactive design and prototyping of the instrument. The instrument design parameters are derived from the surgeon’s needs such as compactness with 5 mm thickness, 5 Degrees of Freedom (DOFs) to provide a wrist-like movement inside the surgical cavity and the force feedback to obtain the feel of touch. The instrument tip has a jaw like structure to support the tissue gripping. We achieved the opening and closing of this jaw with the help of a shape memory alloy (SMA). A force sensor placed near the SMA captures the forces as low as 570 mN from the surgical environment to provide the force feedback to the surgeon. This rigid body surgical instrument exerts an adequate force required for high force demanding applications such as suturing and needle insertion. In addition, we demonstrate a 4 DOFs serial robotic slave manipulator which carries the surgical instrument as an end effector. This report paves the way towards the development and commercialization of low-cost, compact and stable surgical robotic instrument and its manipulator for biomedical applications.