Hands-on reconfigurable robotic surgical instrument holder arm

Abstract

The use of conventional surgical tool holders requires an assistant during positioning and adjustment due to the lack of weight compensation. In this paper, we introduce a robotic arm system with hands-on control approach. The robot incorporates a force sensor at the end effector which realises tool weight compensation as well as hands-on manipulation. On the operating table, the required workspace can be tight due to a number of instruments required. There are situations where the surgical tool is at the desired location but the holder arm pose is not ideal due to space constraints or obstacles. Although the arm is a non-redundant robot because of the limited degrees of freedom, the pseudo-null-space inverse kinematics can be used to constrain a particular joint of the robot to a specific angle while the other joints compensate in order to minimise the tool movement. This allows operator to adjust the arm configuration conveniently together with the weight compensation. Experimental results demonstrated that our robotic arm can maintain the tool position during reconfiguration significantly more stably than a conventional one.