Control system design for a novel minimally invasive surgical robot

Abstract

A novel separate robotic system for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has been presented in this paper. Control system architectures were designed, basing on versatile performance criteria. The compact control and mechanical structure were suitable for medical environment. Function and safety design satisfying medical application were integrated into the robot system as well. Additionally, intuitive control algorithm solved the problems of hand-eye incoordination and workspace mismatch between master hands and slave arms during the master–slave control process. A series of experiments have been accomplished to evaluate the performance of the robotic system at last. The results demonstrated that the robotic system was capable of executing surgical operation intuitively and implementing auxiliary functions perfectly, which meant that the control system was feasible and reliable.

Keywords:

• Control system design
• intuitive control
• function design
• MIS robot
• master–slave control

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (‘863 Program’) [grant No. 2012AA041601], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant No. 61305139], Self-Planned Task [grant No. SKLRS201406B] of State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System (HIT), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant No. HIT. NSRIF. 2013052].