Design of an Insertable Surgical Robot with Multi-Level Endoscopic Control for Single Port Access Surgery

Single Port Surgery (SPS) and Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES) bring the benefits: reduced surgical trauma and less patient's burden. However, they are still limited in the area of instrument dexterity and operability. This paper presents an Insertable Surgical Robot (ISR) for Single Port Access Surgery (SPAS), this robot uses multi-level architectures in the field of endoscopic vision control. It resolves the complex conversion on operation between vision and manipulators, and improves the operability. The ISR consists of an insertable central stem, a flexible sheath, two dexterous manipulators, and a quadrilateral link driven endoscope. The dexterous manipulators and endoscopic mechanism are located on the distal side of the flexible sheath, achieving two bendable DOFs and one translational DOF by following the motions of flexible sheath. The configuration of the ISR makes it could be inserted through a Phi 25mm port, and execute management of flexible sheath, dual manipulators and quadrilateral link with visual information. The flexible sheath and quadrilateral link are used for controlling the endoscopic view, the control strategy of endoscopic view is presented, and the experimental result shows the control method is competent.