Development of a New Single Port Surgery Robot with Increased Torque and Workspace

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a new single port surgery robot, Plat spring driven mech-anism equipped robot for single port LAparoscopic Surgery (PLAS), with plate spring driven mechanism. Recently, the number of single port laparoscopic surgery (SILS) that can easily conceal postoperative scars is increasing, and robotic SILS platforms are being developed for solving inconvenient maneuverability of manual SILS. However, the drive mechanism of most robotic SILS platforms existing consists of wire, therefore cannot afford to deliver sufficient force, and the wire is mechanically deformed, thus causing negative effects on movement accuracy. Due to this limitation, a precious operation cannot be conducted by using conventional robotic SILS platforms. Accuracy and force are reduced as the workspace is ex-panding. The purpose of proposed robot is to increase tissue handling force of forceps by using plate spring driven mechanism, and to conduct more stable and precious operations in an expanded area. Eval-uations of PLAS were performed and its feasibility as a new effective robotic SILS platform was proved ⓒ 2013 DGIST