Development of a foldable five-finger robotic hand for assisting in laparoscopic surgery

Abstract

This study aims to develop a robotic hand that can be inserted into the body from a small incision wound and can handle large organs in a laparoscopic surgery. We determined the requirements for the proposed hand based on a surgeon's motions in Hand-assisted laparoscopic surgery(HALS). We identified four basic motions: “grasp,” “pinch,” “exclusion,” and “spread.” The proposed hand has the necessary degree of freedom(DoFs) for performing these movements, five fingers, as in a human's hand, and a palm that can be folded into a bellows when the surgeon inserts the hand into the abdominal cavity. We evaluated the proposed robot hand based on a performance test, and confirmed that it can be inserted from a 20 mm incision wound and grasp the simulated organs.