Development of a New Robotic Forceps Manipulator for Minimally Invasive Surgery and Its Control

This paper proposes a new robotic forceps manipulator for laparoscopic surgery using the double-screw-drive (DSD) mechanism developed by us. DSD mechanism is a link driven mechanism which enables omni-directional bending motion by rotating two linkages consisted of right-handed screw, universal joint and left-handed screw. A novel point of this paper lies in the fact that the DSD robotic forceps manipulator was enhanced so that its gripper can rotate. This is achieved by rotating another linkage in DSD mechanism. On the other hand, the opening and closing motions of a gripper is attained by wire-drive. In order to control the developed multi-DOF robotic forceps manipulator as a master slave manipulator system, joy-stick type master manipulator is also built and servo system is constructed. Bending motion experiments show the effectiveness of the constructed control system