Development of a robotic endoscope holder for nasal surgery

This paper presents a new robotic system that assists surgeons in manipulating the endoscope during nasal surgical procedures. The presented robotic system has four degrees of freedom (DOF) arm with a wire-driven double parallelogram mechanism to control the three orientation angles and the insertion depth of the endoscope in the nasal cavity in a decoupled manner. The double parallelogram mechanism leads to a remote center of motion (RCM) at the entry point of the patient´s nostril. One of the important features of the developed robot is that the safety of the operation is guaranteed by passive mechanisms and active force control. The passive mechanisms protect safety of the surgeons, the patient and the motors as well. The active force control algorithm monitors the interaction force exerted at the robot by the external environment and control it within a safe threshold. Voice and foot control interfaces have also been developed to facilitate the surgeon to fully control the robotic system without using hands. Experiments with manikin, animal and human cadaver have been conducted to demonstrate the performance of the developed robotic system.