Dexterous, compact telesurgical robot: thoat & airways

描述（由申请人提供）： 远程外科手术“主/从”机器人已被证明具有显著的潜力，可增强外科医生在心脏、腹部、前列腺和其他外科专业中执行精细和灵巧的微创手术（MIS）的能力。尽管取得了这些进展，当前的机器人仪器对于喉咙和气道手术等外科领域来说仍然太大和/或灵活性不足，这些领域需要在非常狭窄的空间中进行高度灵巧的双手操纵。 拟议的探索性生物工程研究项目的长期目标是开发一类新的模块化，可扩展的手术机器人，并评估此类系统的潜力，以扩大微创手术方法的范围，以达到在此类空间中需要高精度和灵活性的手术。 我们的具体目标如下：1）开发一个非常紧凑，精确，和高灵活性的手术“从”机器人适用于微创手术的喉咙和气道; 2）将此机器人与现有的主控制器集成，以创建一个原型外科手术系统;第三章评价该系统在代表喉的约束和环境的体模上执行组织操作任务的性能。手术 我们提出的手术机器人采用非常紧凑，新颖的10自由度（DOF）的手臂，每个由一个小的4自由度的“工具操作单元”安装在病人的外部，操纵一个4毫米直径的“远端灵巧单元”（DDU）延伸到病人的身体。每个DDU都有一个2自由度的蛇形尖端，在尖端的末端是一个微小的3自由度平行连杆操纵台，以增加灵活性，操纵小型夹具或其他工具。DDU使用灵活的超弹性材料和新颖的推拉驱动方案，以提供精确的操作，并具有足够的强度，可用于执行诸如飞行任务。由于这种设计不需要枢轴接头、电缆或类似元件，因此它有望可制造并可扩展到更小的尺寸。我们将使用这种设计构造一个双臂“奴隶”机器人。我们将把这个机器人与我们实验室中几个可用的主控制器和软件之一集成在一起。我们将在新手和经验丰富的外科医生组中对组合系统与手持器械（具有适当的体模）进行比较。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Telesurgical "master/slave" robots have demonstrated significant potential to enhance surgeons' ability to perform delicate and dexterous minimally-invasive surgery (MIS) in cardiac, abdominal, prostate, and other surgical specialties. Despite these developments, current robotic instruments are still too large and/or have insufficient dexterity for surgical domains such as throat and airway surgery, which require highly dexterous, two handed manipulation in very confined spaces. The long-term goal of the proposed exploratory bioengineering research project is to develop a new class of modular, scalable surgical robots and to evaluate the potential of such systems to expand the scope of minimally-invasive surgical approaches to procedures requiring high precision and dexterity in such spaces. Our Specific Aims are as follows: 1) Develop a very compact, precise, and high-dexterity surgical "slave" robot suitable for minimally invasive surgery of the throat and airways; 2) Integrate this robot with an existing master controller to create a prototype telesurgical system; 3) Evaluate the performance of this system for suturing and tissue manipulation tasks on phantoms representing the constraints and environment of laryngeal surgery. Our proposed surgical robot employs very compact, novel 10 degree-of-freedom (DOF) arms, each consisting of a small 4 DOF "tool manipulation unit" mounted outside the patient, manipulating a 4 mm diameter "distal dexterity unit" (DDU) extending into the patient's body. Each DDU has a 2 DOF snake-like tip, at the end of which is a tiny 3 DOF parallel-link manipulation stage for added dexterity, manipulating a small gripper or other tool. The DDU uses flexible superelastic materials and a novel push-pull actuation scheme to provide precise manipulation with sufficient strength for tasks like suturing. Since this design does not require pivot joints, cables, or similar elements, it promises to be manufacturable and scalable to even smaller sizes. We will construct a 2-armed "slave" robot using this design. We will integrate this robot with one of several available master controllers and software in our laboratory. We will evaluate the combined system in comparison to hand-held instruments with suitable phantoms on groups of novice and experienced surgeons.