Development of a Robotic Laparoscope for Laparoscopic Surgery and its Control

Abstract

In this work, a control method for a robotic laparoscope using a motion sensor, namely Kinect for Windows, is proposed so that the surgeon can operate the laparoscope with his/her head motions. In the control system of the robotic laparoscope, four types of head motion (up, down, left, and right), as well as the open-and-close motion of the mouth, are distinguished via a Kinect sensor. The tip of the robotic laparoscope is controlled in order to follow the head direction that is desired by the surgeon. In addition, the surgeon can change the tip speed of the robotic laparoscope through the open-and-close motion of the mouth, in accordance with the operational situation. For validation purposes, the proposed control system was applied to a robotic laparoscope of three degrees of freedom, which was built for the surgical robot for single-port surgery (SPS) that was developed in our previous study, and verification experiments were conducted. It was verified that the operator can control the tip of the robotic laparoscope intuitively, and the tip position of the robotic laparoscope can track the target position quickly and accurately.