Design and kinematics analysis of a cable-stayed notch manipulator for transluminal endoscopic surgery

Abstract

The friction between the joints of the continuum manipulator with discrete joints brings great difficulties to kinematic modeling. The traditional driving wire arrangement limits the load capacity of the manipulator. A cable-stayed notch manipulator for transluminal endoscopic surgery is proposed, and a driving force coupling kinematic mode is established. The manipulator is fabricated from a superelastic Nitinol tube with bilaterally cut rectangular notches and is actuated by a stay cable. By applying the comprehensive elliptic integral solution (CEIS) for large deformation beams, the bending angle of each elastic beam is obtained, and the kinematics from the driving space to the joint space is formed. According to the bending angle of each elastic beam, the expression of the manipulator in Cartesian space can be obtained by geometric analysis. The kinematics from the joint space to the Cartesian space is established. The outer diameter of the manipulator is only 3.5 mm, and the inner diameter can reach 2 mm, allowing instruments to pass through. The maximum error of the manipulator movement is less than 5%. The load capacity of the manipulator has been verified through the stiffness experiments, and the maximum load of the manipulator can reach 400 g. The cable-stayed notch manipulator can be accurately modeled on the base of CEIS, and its motion accuracy can meet the needs of engineering applications. The compact size and excellent load capacity of the manipulator make it potential for application in transluminal endoscopic surgical robots.

Keywords

Medical robot / Comprehensive elliptic integral solution / Kinematics / Notch continuum manipulator / Transluminal endoscopic surgery

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Yanqiang Lei: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Supervision, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Fuxin Du: Validation, Supervision, Resources. Huajian Song: Funding acquisition, Formal analysis. Liping Zhang: Resources, Project administration.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2023YFB4705800 and 2022YFB4703000), the Key Research and Development Program of Shandong Province, China (2022CXGC010503), and Shandong Provincial Postdoctoral Innovative Talents Funded Scheme, China (238226).

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