Development of a Pneumatic Surgical Manipulator IBIS IV

In teleoperated, minimally invasive surgery systems, the measurement and conveyance of a sense of force to the operator is problematic. In order to carry out safer and more precise operations using robotic manipulators, force measurement and operator feedback are very important factors. We previously proposed a pneumatic surgical manipulator that is capable of estimating external force without the use of force sensors. However, the force estimation had a sensitivity of only 3 N because of inertia and friction effects. In this paper, we develop a new and improved model of the pneumatic surgical manipulator, IBIS IV. We evaluate its performance in terms of force estimation. The experimental results indicate that IBIS IV estimates external forces with a sensitivity of 1.0 N. We also conduct an in-vivo experiment and confirm the effectiveness and improvement of the manipulator.