Project overview

The objective of this project is to create a remote centre of motion mechanism, for use in minimally invasive surgical procedures. The project is motivated by the bulkiness of the existing remote centre of motion mechanism, e.g., the parallelogram.

In surgical procedures, having a bulky mechanism may block the immediate access of human surgeons’ access to the patient, and could also render inter-robotic-arm collision. Additionally, when used in an image-guided process, having a kinematic chain and its actuators closer to the imaging centre may result in imaging artefacts.

Our proposed solution is a novel remote centre of motion mechanism, the dual-triangular linkage. Articulated and cable-constrained versions of the designs have been developed and verified through skeletal prototypes of minimally invasive surgical robots.

Moreover, we have demonstrated through simulations a 35% decrease in the device footprint compared to the mainstream parallelogram-based design, i.e., a smaller volume swept by the mechanism as it conducts surgical manipulations. The reduction will further translate into fewer collisions between surgical robotic arms and more space for human surgeons to operate.