Development of a miniature robot for hearing aid implantation

In this paper, we present a novel robotic assistant dedicated to otologic surgery for an implantable hearing aid system, which is a procedure involving drilling into the lateral skull of the patient. This compact and flexible miniature robot is designed so as to fulfill the requirements of precise bone drillings for hearing aid implantation. It is built from an original five degree-of-freedom (DOF) parallel structure with a motorized end-effector, particularly well suited to otological surgical procedure. The specification, the design and the analysis of the workspace are detailed. A preliminary accuracy evaluation is presented. A rotational accuracy of 0.6 ± 0.6° and a translational accuracy of 1.4 ± 0.5 mm were found.