A force-sensing surgical tool with a proximally located force/torque sensor

作者：Schwalb W^*; Shirinzadeh B; Smith J

来源：International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, 2017, 13(1): e1737.

DOI：10.1002/rcs.1737

• surgical robotics
• force-sensing surgical tool
• force-feedback enabled surgical robot
• minimally invasive surgery

Background Robotic surgery has seen a rapid increase in popularity in the last few decades because advantages such as increased accuracy and dexterity can be realized. These systems still lack force-feedback, where such a capability is believed to be beneficial to the surgeon and can improve safety.
Method In this paper a force-feedback enabled surgical robotic system is described in which the developed force-sensing surgical tool is discussed in detail. The developed surgical tool makes use of a proximally located force/torque sensor, which, in contrast to a distally located sensor, requires no miniaturization or sterilizability.
Results Experimental results are presented, and indicate high force sensing accuracies with errors <0.09 N.
Conclusions It is shown that developing a force-sensing surgical tool utilizing a proximally located force/torque sensor is feasible, where a tool outer diameter of 12mm can be achieved. For future work it is desired to decrease the current tool outer diameter to 10mm.

• 出版日期2017-3