Design and experimental evaluation of an innovative SMA-based tendon-driven redundant endoscopic robotic surgical tool

Abstract

The development and experimental evaluation of a prototype endoscopic robotic surgical tool is presented in this article. Smart memory alloys (SMA) are used as wires in a tendon-driven actuation mechanism. The 2N-DOF redundant manipulator is a cascade configuration of N-universal joint modules. The kinematics of the tool is analyzed and simple yet effective controllers relying on a constrained non-linear optimization problem are offered. The surgical tool's shape can be deformed according to a predefined profile leading to more versatile configurations than the existing designs. The efficiency of the overall system is investigated in experimental studies where its performance is evaluated by a customized 3D-video system.