Design and kinematic analysis of a parallel robot with Remote Center of Motion for Minimally Invasive Surgery

A Remote Center of Motion (RCM) Robot can imitate medical operative of surgeons in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) and improve surgical precision. Compared to serial robots, parallel robots are more compact, more isotropic and have better rigidity and accuracy. A design of a new type of RCM parallel robot is proposed in this paper, which including the robot mechanical structure, kinematics and optimization design. The workspace of the mechanism is derived from the inverse kinematics. The global performance index (GPI) is used as the performance evaluation index to optimize the structure design by the algorithm of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The results of the paper are used to analysis the performance of robot to confirm the structure design, and prepare for prototype machining.