Pneumatically driven forceps manipulator for laparoscopic surgery

In this paper, a pneumatically driven forceps manipulator which is suitable for suturing task is developed. The manipulator has a wire drive rotating joint at the tip part and enables precise gripper rotation into practice. The gripper mechanism which consists of a small cylinder and slider-crank mechanism is proposed and implemented at the tip part. The gripper is driven by air pressure supplied by a fine tube that can avoid the interference of other joints. The gripping force of 20 N is achieved. We constructed a master-slave system with the forceps manipulator, and some suturing experiment was executed using a sponge object. It became clear that the forceps manipulator has good maneuverability and can estimate the external torque with the uncertainty of 10 mNm.