Pneumatically Driven Multi-DOF Surgical Forceps Manipulator with a Bending Joint Mechanism Using Elastic Bodies

Abstract

In this study, a pneumatically-driven forceps manipulator was developed for a master-slave-type surgical robot. The proposed manipulator had two flexible joints, one for the bending joint at the tip and the other for transmitting a bending force from the actuators to the wires of the forceps. The manipulator had two degree-of-freedoms (DOFs) of bending driven by only two pneumatic cylinders and a gripper driven by a cylinder. Given the interoperability in real surgery, a mechanism was proposed such that the clean forceps part could be easily attached to and detached from the filthy drive unit. An experiment of the master-slave-system was conducted with the proposed manipulator to verify the tracking performance of the cylinders’ position and the bending angle of the forceps manipulator.