Design of a multi-arm concentric-tube robot system for transnasal surgery

Concentric tube robot (CTR) has gradually attracted the attention of researchers on the basis of its small size and curved shape control ability. However, most of current experimental prototypes of CTR are single-arm structure, which can only carry out simple operation such as drug delivery or monitoring. In this paper, design and analysis of a three-arm CTR system is proposed. It has a four-DOF vision arm and two six-DOF manipulator arms, which equipped with special end effectors to achieve different surgical operations. Finally, a mean motion accuracy of 0.33 mm has been obtained quantitatively through teleoperation experiments. Moreover, tissue excision experiment in skull model is carried out to prove the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed CTR system in nasopharyngeal carcinoma surgery. Graphical Abstract Platform of the proposed Multi-Arm Concentric Tube Robot system. (a) Configuration of the end-effectors with the CTR system. (b) The setup of the tissue removal experiment in a skull model.