Prototype of a Surgical Robot with Contact Force Feedback

Surgical and medical robotics had become an interesting field of research joining disciplines such as biomedical engineering, mechatronics and automatic control. One of the main design issues of surgical robots is the interaction (contact force) between the end effector and the biological tissue. This manuscript presents the design, instrumentation and control of a surgical robot prototype (SRP) with two robotic arms of three degrees of freedom (DoF) attached to a cartesian robot, getting a total of five DoF per arm. The end effector consists of a robotic scalpel instrumented with force sensors to interact with the biological tissue resulting in more precise cuttings and avoiding, at the same time, damage of surrounding areas. An output-feedback proportional derivative hybrid controller is applied to track the trajectories aimed to realized precise cut. Simulations and experimental results show the performance of the SRP.