Development of a Novel Flexible Surgical Robot with Haptic Sensation

Sponsored by CUHK Shun Hing Institute of Advanced Engineering (2015-2017)

Principal Investigator: 

Prof. Li Zheng, Institute of Digestive Disease, Chow Yuk Ho Technology Centre for Innovative Medicine, Biomedical Engineering

Co-Investigators: 

• Prof. Joseph J.Y. Sung, Faculty of Medicine

• Prof. Philip W. Y. Chiu, Department of Surgery, Chow Yuk Ho Technology Centre for Innovative Medicine

• Prof. Ruxu Du, department of mechanical and automation engineering

Project Team:

• Dr. Wang Hongmin

• Mr. Song chengzhi

Introduction: 

Robot assisted MIS brings to patient multiple benefits, including shorter hospital stay, less post-operative pain, less blood loss, better cosmesis, etc. In the market, the da Vinci robot is the dominant player in MIS. It is equipped with slender rigid arms and lacks of tactile sensation which is crucial in surgical interventions. The rigid arms pivot about the trocar and lack of dexterity inside the body. Also, the pivoting creates a large sweeping motion, which may cause damages to vital structures. Flexible robot is intrinsically safer. However, their payload capacity is small due to the low stiffness. The sweeping motion generated by the arm bending remains significant. Also, the workspace and dexterity are limited due to the lack of control in either the length or the curvature of the bending section. In this project, a novel constrained tendon-driven serpentine mechanism (CTSM) will be employed to design the proposed flexible surgical robot. In the CTSM both the length and curvature of the bending section are controllable, which gives the robot much improved dexterity and larger workspace. A shape reconstruction based force sensing method will be developed to enable the robot’s tactile sensation. What’s more, a tension based stiffness control method will be implemented to endow controllable stiffness to the flexible robot. Therefore, the payload capability can be actively adjusted based on the surgical task. As a summary, the developed robot will integrate the following advantages: tactile sensation, much reduced sweeping motion, controllable stiffness, enhanced dexterity, and expanded workspace.

Publications:

1. Song Shuang, Li Zheng, Yu Haoyong and Ren Hongliang, "Real-time Shape Sensing Method for Multi-Section Wire-Driven Flexible Robots Based on Quadratic Bezier Curves", IEEE Sensors, 2015 (accepted)

2. Li Zheng, Yu Haoyong and Ren Hongliang, "A Novel Underactuated Tendon-driven Serpentine Manipulator with Translational Passive Constraint", IEEE IROS 2015 (accepted)