Abstract
To prevent accidents in minimally invasive surgeries, force limiters have been developed for forceps grippers. When a force limiter is in use, if the absolute value of its spring constant is reduced, the risk of damage to the organs decreases. This paper proposes the use of a leaf spring buckling mechanism as a force limiter for forceps. The results obtained indicate that the spring constant of a buckled leaf spring is lower than that of a normal coil spring. Furthermore, the use of a leaf spring allows the independent adjustment of its thickness and width, based on the stress and force values. This enables an easy calibration of the threshold value. In the experiments, the spring constant of the buckled leaf spring was 1.5 times 10^{-1} N/mm, which is half of that of a normal coil spring. After calibrating the gripping force, it was confirmed that the force limiter reduced the extent of damage to the dummy organs in the ex vivo experiments.
Highlights
An advantage of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is the reduction of damage to the patient after the surgery; this type of surgery requires difficult techniques by surgeons as compared to conventional surgery
This paper proposes the use of a leaf spring buckling mechanism as a force limiter for forceps
This paper proposed the use of a leaf spring buckling mechanism as a force limiter for forceps
Summary
An advantage of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is the reduction of damage to the patient after the surgery; this type of surgery requires difficult techniques by surgeons as compared to conventional surgery. The degree of freedom in general surgical instruments decreases from six to four because these instruments are inserted into trocars. Surgical robots [1] or manipulators [2] have been developed. One problem with these surgical instruments is the transmission of force information. Some surgical robots [1] lose the force information to the surgeons. Applying excess force in gripping or exclusion might cause serious damage to the organs. To prevent such accidents, it is generally effective to measure the force acting on the forceps; many force sensors have been developed for forceps [3–5]. Equipping forceps only with force sensors does not eliminate accidents owing to
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