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Updated: Oct 19, 2025
Design and Fabrication of an Elastomeric Unit for Soft Modular Robots in Minimally Invasive Surgery
Published on: November 14, 2015
Design of a dexterous robotic surgical instrument with a novel bending mechanism
Yingkan Yang1, Jianmin Li1, Kang Kong1
1Key Laboratory of Mechanism Theory and Equipment Design of Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
Background:
The robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) has developed rapidly in recent years, requiring highly articulated instruments to enable surgeons to perform complicated and precise procedures.
Methods:
A novel wrist-type surgical instrument was proposed for RMIS. The wrist consists of superelastic-wire-driven snake-like joints and universal joints, which could perform two deflections and one distal rotation. The bending mechanism and the kinematics of universal joints were analysed. The forward and inverse kinematics of the wrist were derived.
Results:
The performances of the instrument were evaluated using a prototype by experiments. The average motion deviation of the wrist's deflection was 0.15 ± 0.08 mm, and the maximum deviation was 0.52 mm. The maximum payload capability was 10 N. The suture task and ex vivo procedure verified the effectiveness of the instrument.
Conclusions:
The proposed instrument has high dexterity and payload capability, which contributes to improving the quality of the RMIS procedures.
