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A Novel Cable-Driven Soft Robot for Surgery

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Abstract

Robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (RARP) is widely used to treat prostate cancer. The rigid instruments primarily used in RARP cannot overcome the problem of blind areas in surgery and lead to more trauma such as more incision for the passage of the instrument and additional tissue damage caused by rigid instruments. Soft robots are relatively flexible and theoretically have infinite degrees of freedom which can overcome the problem of the rigid instrument. A soft robot system for single-port transvesical robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (STvRARP) is developed in this paper. The soft manipulator with 10 mm in diameter and a maximum bending angle of 270° has good flexibility and dexterity. The design and mechanical structure of the soft robot are described. The kinematics of the soft manipulator is established and the inverse kinematics is compensated based on the characteristics of the designed soft manipulator. The master-slave control system of soft robot for surgery is built and the feasibility of the designed soft robot is verified.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Forming Technology and Equipment, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200030, China

    Ru Li  (李 茹), Xiongpeng Shu  (舒雄鹏) & Le Xie  (谢 叻)

  2. The Sixth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200233, China

    Fang Chen  (陈 方)

  3. Center for Frontier Medical Engineering, Chiba University, Chiba, 263-8522, Japan

    Wenwei Yu  (俞文伟) & Tatsuo Igarash

  4. Seirei Sakura Citizen Hospital, Chiba, 285-8765, Japan

    Tatsuo Igarash

  5. Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200030, China

    Le Xie  (谢 叻)

  6. School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Quanzhou Normal University, Quanzhou, 362000, Fujian, China

    Le Xie  (谢 叻)

Authors
  1. Ru Li  (李 茹)
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  2. Fang Chen  (陈 方)
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  3. Wenwei Yu  (俞文伟)
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  4. Tatsuo Igarash
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  5. Xiongpeng Shu  (舒雄鹏)
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  6. Le Xie  (谢 叻)
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Le Xie  (谢 叻).

Additional information

Foundation item: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 62133009, 61973211, 51911540479 and M-0221), the Project of the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (No. 21550714200), the Research Project of Institute of Medical Robotics of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Foreign Cooperation Project of Fujian Science and Technology Plan (No. 2022I0041), and the Quanzhou High-Level Talent Innovation and Entrepreneurship Project (No. 2021C003R)

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Li, R., Chen, F., Yu, W. et al. A Novel Cable-Driven Soft Robot for Surgery. J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.) 29, 60–72 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12204-022-2497-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12204-022-2497-3

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