A Master–Slave Integrated Surgical Robot With Active Motion Transformation Using Wrist Axis

In this paper, a master-slave integrated surgical robot system for the laparoscopic surgery is proposed. Instead of commanding the manipulator from the remote master console, the proposed system integrates the master controller into the proximal end of the slave manipulator. The slave has a flexible wrist joint, whose bending angle is operated by a joystick on the master. Focusing on suturing of a curved needle, which is a common task in laparoscopic surgery, we developed an active motion transformation method that allows the surgeon to insert the needle easily. When inserting the needle, the proposed system transforms the surgeon's wrist rotation into the rotation about the bent forceps gripper. Positioning performance of the proposed system is evaluated by an experiment. Furthermore, we compared the suturing task performance between the proposed system and conventional forceps. The experimental results show that the proposed system reduces the contact force against an organ model.