Evaluation of a master slave system with force sensing using pneumatic servo system for laparoscopic surgery

In the teleoperated minimally invasive surgery systems, measurement and display of sense of force to the operator is a problem. We have been developing a master slave system with force sensing using pneumatic actuators at the slave side. The system has 7-DOFs and is able to estimate external force without force sensors using pneumatic cylinders. In this paper, firstly, the slave manipulator is modified using a pneumatic rotary actuators to make the system more compact for controlling the tip part of the forceps. Then, the force control type of impedance control is adopted without force sensor for the pneumatic slave manipulator. For the master manipulator the motion control type of impedance control is implemented. Finally, the effectiveness of the system is evaluated with some experiments.