Microsurgical telerobot system

Abstract

A microsurgical telerobot system has been developed according to the results of the microsurgery task analysis. Several fields of the microsurgery have been investigated and the surgery tasks and tool motions are analyzed to acquire guidelines for specifications of a microsurgical telerobot system. A slave robot system consists of a 6-DOF parallel micromanipulator, that is our own modified Stewart platform type, and a 6-DOF macro-motion industrial robot that mounts the parallel micromanipulator at the end. A 6-DOF force-reflecting master device has also been developed using five-bar parallel mechanisms driven by harmonic DC servomotors. A bilateral control algorithm has been proposed based on the force-position loop, and the local position controller for the master has been developed to minimize the effect of gravity, friction, and inertia.