A Single Port Robotic System with parallelkinematic arms for rectal surgery

Single-Port surgery is an innovative technique and the next step in minimally invasive surgery. Performing complex surgical procedures through only one single incision or a natural orifice is a challenging task that could be simplified by involving surgical telemanipulators. Throughout the last decade, several single-port robots where introduced. While most of these system use cable driven continuum robots to set up the intracorporeal arms the FLEXMIN device uses miniaturized parallel kinematics instead. This talk introduces the surgical telemanipulator FLEXMIN and focuses on the design and characterisation of the parallel kinematics. Because the telemanipulator will provide haptic feedback, the results of a first realized sensor concept that uses distally located force sensors to measure the tip force is presented. With the manufactured prototype, complex surgical procedures like suturing and knot tying can be performed. Furthermore, it is shown that this approach is capable of applying high payloads exceeding 5 N and generating dynamic movements with speeds of more than 320 mm/s and accelerations beyond 1 G. Because of the rigidity, excellent controllability and low latency the manipulator can perform high dynamic movements with the potential to compensate the movements of organs