RoMAN-MD: 6 DOF humanoid arm for medical applications

Abstract

During the last five years, we developed two types of humanoid arms called as RoMAN and RAMeX. RAMeX has been developed for imitating human arm motions with low cost, whereas RoMAN is a high-end humanoid arm module with micrometer precision. The authors have noticed that such humanoid arms and the robotic arms for surgery have a close similarity in their functions and structures. All of them imitate motions of human arms in common. In this paper, we try to evolve the humanoid arms(RoMAN) into the surgical robotic arms(called as RoMAN-MD) by modifying kinematic parameters. The surgical robotic arms differ from the humanoid arms in many detailed aspects such as degree of freedom(DOF), workspace, configuration of multiple arms, control scheme, an end effector. In order to evolve RoMAN into the surgical robotic arm(RoMAN-MD) effectively, RoMAN is reconfigured as a form of module. The module includes all the parts for a robotic arm such as motors and controllers. The original version of RoMAN did not take the modular design into account and was attached to a torso with complicacy. The robotic arm module is very convenient to configure a surgical robot system consisting of several robot arms. The purpose of RoMAN-MD is to perform robotic operations in minimally invasive surgery(MIS) or robot assisted surgery.