Development of a Tool Manipulator Driven by a Flexible Shaft for Single-Port Endoscopic Surgery

Recently, a robotic system was developed to assist in Single-Port Endoscopic Surgery (SPS). However, the existing system required a manual operation of vision and viewpoint, hindering the surgical task. We proposed a surgical endoscopic robot for SPS with a dynamic vision control, the endoscopic view being manipulated by a master controller. The prototype robot consists of a manipulator for vision control, and dual tool tissue manipulators (gripping: five DOFs; cautery: three DOFs) can be attached at the tip of the sheath manipulator. In particular, this paper focuses on the details of the mechanism and control scheme of the tool manipulator. The experimental results show that our manipulator exhibits a response with a precision of less than 0.15 mm and a time delay of less than 31 ms, when the input frequency is 1.0 Hz.