Design of a force-reflective master robot for haptic telesurgery applications: RoboMaster1

With the increasing trend toward Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) procedures, the need to develop new robotic systems to facilitate such surgeries is more and more recognized. This paper describes the design and development of a 4 DOF force-reflective master robot (RoboMaster1) for haptic telesurgery applications. A two-double parallelogram robot is introduced including a novel mechanism at the base for producing and control of the end effector's linear motion. This eliminates the deficiencies caused due to suspending massive actuators at the end effector or cabling from the base. The kinematics and work space of the system were analyzed and a prototype was developed for primary practical evaluations. The results showed that the system can effectively simulate the surgeon's hand maneuvers inside the abdominal cavity with a Remote Center of Motion (RCM) located at the backside. With this important feature, the system is expected to facilitate the key hole surgeries by eliminating the need for inverse and/or scaled maneuvers during minimally invasive surgeries.