10.12.2017
6Remote centre of motion (RCM) robots are constrained to rotate around a spatial point, making them ideal for robotic minimally invasive surgery for the fixture of incision ports and promotion of patient safety. Yet, existing RCM mechanisms have large device footprints, thus suffer extensive collisions when manipulated within confined workspaces near the incision ports.
A novel RCM mechanism, the dual triangular linkage (DTL), is proposed, featuring a unique four-bar linkage and parallelograms to minimise the device footprint. A prototype with two-degree-of-freedom RCM based on DTL was developed and validated the RCM function. Simulation indicated up to 35% reduction in device footprint and up to 80% reduction in weight compared to the parallelogram, which is the most widely deployed RCM mechanism on the RCM surgical robots.
Personnel - Dr Shao Liu (past student, current postdoctoral fellow)
Thesis - Design and Modelling of Robots for Minimally Invasive Surgery
