Kinematic Analysis of Stereotactic Bioprinting Prototype Based on Double-Parallelogram Mechanism

Abstract

Motion control strategies of currently available bioprinters are mainly based on the Cartesian coordinate system to perform layer-by-layer stacking of materials along the vertical direction through the axial-aligned horizontal slicing method. The stacked bioprinting strategy that is inconsistent with the growing pattern of natural biological tissues/organs with anisotropic property in some sense, is stimulating new bioprinting techniques such as the stereotactic bioprinting. This paper analytically calculates the forward and inverse kinematics of a four degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) robotic bioprinter prototype developed in our group which is featured with a 3-DOF manipulator and a 1-DOF circular rail for stereotactic bioprinting. Numerical simulations of working space and motion characteristics using MATLAB and V-REP software have validated the performance and feasibility of the developed prototype, which provides a robot-assisted solution reference for the stereotactic bioprinting.