A Dual-Arm Concentric-Tube Robot System for Transnasal Surgery

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel dual-arm concentric-tube robot (CTR) system in transnasal minimally-invasive surgery (MIS) of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) resection. Firstly, the design of the robot system is described including the manipulators that consist of NiTi tubes, the modular actuation unit modules, the bending unit constraining the robot into a Y-shaped configuration, and optimization of the Y-shaped transmission system. Then, the kinematic model of CTR is introduced and a bimanual teleoperation approach is presented based on it. Finally, a performance test experiment and a tumor resection experiment have been successfully carried out based on the robot prototype, which show the feasibility of the proposed dual-arm CTR system in transnasal MIS of NPC resection.