A Customizable, Compact Robotic Manipulator for Assisting Multiple Dental Procedures

In this paper, we propose a manipulator with 4 degrees of freedom, actuated by tendon-sheath mechanism and can be tele-operated by a haptic device, the end-effector of which is inner-changeable. The manipulator we proposed consists of two cylindrical joints and two revolute joints, the workspace of which can be customized by adding or removing any of these joint modules or modifying the dimensions. In our case, we optimized the workspace of the manipulator to fit into human oral cavity in order to assist in multiple dental procedures, by holding different dental tools at certain positions or along trajectories under remote control. The performance of our manipulator is presented by figures, quantified and validated by motion and force transmission experiments. Different from current manipulators used in dental surgeries, which were simply adapted from industrial manipulators with workspace in meters, our proposed manipulator is specifically designed for dental applications. Its compact structure, proper workspace, as well as low cost make it promising for improving dental treatments efficiency and realizing automatic dental surgeries in the future.