Design and kinematic analysis of a hybrid manipulator for spine surgery

Because of the urgent requirements for the high precision surgical equipment which can finish the minimally invasive spine surgery, a new robot-assisted system for the positioning and orienting of all kinds of surgical instruments in lumbar spinal surgery is developed with the consideration of the anatomical structure of vertebras and the operation character. The workspace, singularity and kinematic model of the hybrid manipulator are analyzed. The global performance index (GPI) is used as the performance evaluation index to optimize the structure parameters of the parallel part by pattern search method. This paper provides a reference for the structure design of robotic system for the minimally invasive spine surgery.