Research on the clamping force feedback system of laparoscopic surgery robot

Robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (MIS) offers several advantages over traditional surgery, including reduced trauma and faster recovery times, leading to its increasingly widespread application. In robot-assisted MIS, the direct contact between surgical instruments and the patient's tissues demands higher precision in movement and enhanced sensing capabilities. This paper focuses on investigating the critical technologies of time delay and gripping force feedback in laparoscopic surgery robot. We propose an actuators-driven surgical robot equipped with gripping force feedback. An experimental system was constructed and control parameters were optimized to achieve ± 180° rotation and 0-60° gripping freedom in primary-secondary control. The experimental measurements indicated that the time delay of the primary-secondary robotic system was maintained at approximately 10 ms. To evaluate the gripping force feedback, three different materials-silicone simulated skin, silicone rubber, and ceramic-were used to simulate human tissue, tumors, and bones, respectively. Sensor measurements of the gripping force feedback revealed that the force required to grip ceramic was twice that needed for gripping the silicone rubber and four times that for gripping the silicone simulated skin. The proposed actuators-driven surgical robot system demonstrates precise primary-secondary synchronous control and accurate gripping force feedback, offering significant potential for the further development of advanced surgical systems.