A Hybrid Electromagnetic and Tendon-Driven Actuator for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Abstract

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is a surgical technique that facilitates access to the internal tissues and organs of a patient’s body via a limited number of small incisions or natural orifice of the patients. Such a technique requires specialized slender surgical instruments with a high levels of dexterity and functionality. However, the currently available MIS instruments are rigid and could offer only limited degrees of freedom (DOFs) that hampers the surgeon’s effort to perform the required operation accurately. In this study, we have developed a hybrid electromagnetic and tendon-driven actuator as an integral part of MIS surgical instruments to provide them with optimum angulation. The design uses a novel electromagnetic structure to lock the position of individual joints, and a tendon-driven structure for the articulation of the surgical instrument. The finite element method (FEM) was utilized to predict the performance of the actuator, which was experimentally validated. Subsequently, a prototype was assembled, and corresponding kinematics analysis was presented to visualize the improvement of the developed mechanism on the functional workspace of the MIS instruments. It was concluded that the developed mechanism could offer three additional DOFs for the surgical instrument and angulation of 180° for each articulated joint.

Keywords

• minimally invasive surgery
• electromagnetic and tendon-driven actuator
• articulation of instrument