Design, Analysis and Development of a New Surgical Instrument Based on Flexible Continuum Mechanism for Minimally Invasive Surgical Robot

This paper presents a new type of surgical robot instrument based on a flexible continuous wrist joint using cable-driven mechanism. The flexible joint mechanism is integrated by super-elastic nylon and fiber materials. It is composed of a series of hollow square structural units spirally superimposed. The structure of the overall system is introduced with performing finite element analysis on flexible bodies, and analyzing the design of the flexible joint using the square leaf spring configuration. Then the kinematics analysis of the flexible body is carried out to obtain the end pose and the reachable space of coordinated movement. An experimental prototype of the surgical robot instrument has been made with five miniature linear servo drivers.