A compact, compliant laparoscopic endoscope manipulator

We have developed a cable-driven manipulator using pneumatic artificial muscle actuators to control the orientation and insertion depth of an endoscope during abdominal surgery. This manipulator enables a single surgeon to manipulate surgical instruments with both hands while the endoscope position is controlled to view an area of interest inside the abdomen. The surgeon may then control the endoscope by alternate methods such as voice commands, pedals, a joystick, or head movements. The advantages of our newly developed endoscope manipulator over those of commercially available robotic laparoscopic surgical systems are its low cost, simplicity, ease of setup and use, compliance, nonintrusiveness, and very small size and light weight, with the disadvantage of somewhat reduced absolute positioning accuracy. Multiple instruments may be manipulated simultaneously by the manipulators set close together. Experimental performance results of open-loop and feedback control methods are presented.