Design and Control of a Parallel Linkage Wrist for Robotic Microsurgery
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Design and Control of a Parallel Linkage Wrist for Robotic Microsurgery Alperen Degirmenci, Student Member, IEEE, Frank L. Hammond III, Member, IEEE, Joshua B. Gafford, Student Member, IEEE, Conor J. Walsh, Member, IEEE, Robert J. Wood, Member, IEEE, Robert D. Howe, Fellow, IEEE Abstract— This paper presents the design and control of a teleoperated robotic system for dexterous micromanipulation tasks at the meso-scale, specifically open microsurgery. Robotic open microsurgery is an unexplored yet potentially a high impact area of surgical robotics. Microsurgical operations, such as microanastomosis of blood vessels and reattachment of nerve fibers, require high levels of manual dexterity and accuracy that surpass human capabilities. A 3-DoF robotic wrist is designed and built based on a spherical five-bar mechanism. The wrist Two DoF SFB Wrist is attached to a 3-axis commercial off-the-shelf linear stage, achieving a fully dexterous system. Design requirements are determined using motion data collected during a simulated Translation microanastomosis operation. The wrist design is optimized to Stage maximize workspace and manipulability. The system is teleop- erated using a haptic device, and has the required bandwidth to replicate microsurgical motions. The system was successfully used in a micromanipulation task to stack 1 mm-diameter metal spheres. The micromanipulation system presented here may improve surgical outcomes during open microsurgery by offering better accuracy and dexterity to surgeons. I. INTRODUCTION Roll Axis Microsurgical operations are performed throughout the body to perform reconstruction, reattachment, and reanima- tion of tissue. These operations, such as microanastomosis of Fig. 1. CAD model of the dexterous manipulation setup. The wrist design is blood vessels and reattachment of nerve fibers, require high based on the 2-DoF spherical five-bar linkage mechanism, with an additional levels of manual dexterity and accuracy that surpass human roll DoF. capabilities. For instance, in vitroretinal surgery, a 10 µm from Columbia [4] focus on vitroretinal surgery. The Micron accuracy is desired [1]; however even trained surgeons have system from Carnegie Mellon aims to cancel out hand a root mean square (RMS) tremor between 49 - 133 µm at tremor using a handheld device [5]. The UBC Motion- the tip of their surgical tool [2]. Scaling Teleoperation System (MSTS) is a force reflecting Researchers have been working on building robot-assisted microsurgery system teleoperated in a multi-stage macro- microsurgery (RAMS) systems that can provide the nec- micro fashion [6]. The RAMS Workstation from JPL was essary positioning precision for such operations, however aimed at microsurgery however the system acted more as a these novel systems are not suited to dexterous teleoperated third-arm and could not actually hold and operate a microsur- open microsurgery. The SteadyHand platform from Johns gical needle [7]. A two arm, four degree of freedom (DoF) Hopkins [3], and the Intra-Ocular Dexterity Robot (IODR) robotic system from SRI International was used to perform arterial anastomosis in rats, but the operation time was two to This work was supported by the Harvard University School of Engineer- three times as long as that in conventional microsurgery [8]. ing and Applied Sciences, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Robotic open microsurgery is an unexplored yet potentially Engineering. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily a high impact area of surgical robotics. Several researchers reflect the views of the Wyss Institute. have used the da Vinci Surgical System from Intuitive A. Degirmenci, J.B. Gafford, C.J. Walsh, R.J. Wood, and R.D. Howe are Surgical, Inc. to perform microanastomosis operations [9]– with the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA. F.L. Hammond III is with the Department [11], however the da Vinci system is intended for macro- of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, scale laparoscopic surgery, and lacks the appropriate tools Cambridge, MA 02139 USA. R.D. Howe is also with the Harvard - MIT for microsurgery. Division of Health Sciences & Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA. E-mail: fadegirmenci, jgafford, walsh, rjwood, This paper explains the design and control of a novel 6- [email protected], [email protected]. DoF robotic system for use in microsurgical operations. The system comprises a 3-DoF XYZ positioning stage, and a 2- characteristics, and the force profile during the experiments DoF spherical five-bar (SFB) parallel linkage robotic wrist [13]. (2-RR) with a third roll DoF that is actuated by a minia- Surgical tools (forceps, tweezers, and needle drivers) were ture motor that is located coaxially with the output shaft. fitted with accelerometers (ADXL 335, Analog Devices Inc.) Commercial off-the-shelf, cost-effective linear stages with and electromagnetic (EM) trackers (trakSTAR, Ascension submicron-level accuracy are used for positioning (Fig. 1). Technologies Inc.) to record tool acceleration and pose. The In Section II we derive the kinematic relations, present our EM trackers have a spatial resolution of 0:5 mm and angular work on optimizing the workspace and manipulability of resolution of 0:1◦, and the accelerometers have a range of the system, and explain the system architecture and control ± 3g of acceleration. A force measurement plate, fitted with methods. Section III describes system characterization meth- a high-precision 6-axis force-torque transducer (Nano17 6- ods and an analysis of the experimental results; and Section axis transducer, ATI Industrial Automation, Inc.), was used IV presents conclusions and future work. To the authors’ to measure forces imparted by the surgeon on the phantom knowledge, this is the first teleoperated robotic microsurgery tissue. The Nano17 can measure forces with resolutions as system to use an SFB wrist. The system presented here will low as 3:125 mN and moments of 0:0156 mNm. Lacrimal be a valuable tool in studying the characteristics of surgeon’s duct tubing of 1 mm diameter was used as a blood vessel motions during microsurgery, understanding teleoperation at phantom. Four interrupted sutures were placed in each mock the meso-scale, and may one day become a valuable tool in vessel. The simulated procedure (one vessel anastomosis) the operating room. took roughly 15 minutes. The maximum force sensed was 82:9 mN. The angular motion bandwidth was 0:0 - 1:34 Hz. II. SYSTEM DESIGN AND CONTROL The tool was rotated a maximum of 110:5◦ in axial rotation, 33:0◦ in elevation, and 37:8◦ in lateral deviation (Fig. 2). The The following design specifications and criteria were con- translational workspace used by the surgeon was 85:9mm × sidered when determining the requirements for the new sys- 110:0mm × 44:8mm. Inset in Fig. 2 shows a plot of the tem: the number of DoF, workspace, resolution, mechanism surgeon’s tool orientation represented by the blue dots. type, inertia, stiffness, speed, force, bandwidth, and control type [12]. B. Mechanism Type Serial chain manipulators are widely used in robotic A. Surgical Motion Characterization systems due to their well-understood kinematics; however In order to determine design specifications, data was they have an inherent tradeoff between positioning accuracy collected during a simulated microanastomosis operation. and system bandwidth. Higher positioning accuracy requires This task was deemed appropriate for this study, because higher stiffness, which increases inertia, however higher microanastomosis is considered by surgeons as one of the inertia reduces system bandwidth. Parallel manipulators, on most difficult procedures to perform due to the challenges the other hand, do not suffer from this tradeoff since the of manipulating small, wet, delicate, and highly compliant actuators can be grounded while still directly driving the vascular tissue. An expert surgeon’s tool position, orien- joints. Thus parallel mechanisms have increased system tation, and acceleration, as well as the force imparted on bandwidth and transparency due to the reduced distal inertia, the phantom tissue were recorded during the experiment. while also maintaining high precision. Parallel structures are This data helped quantify workspace requirements, motion also capable of supporting and exerting higher loads and forces. One disadvantage of parallel mechanisms is that they Instrument Rotation 110.5º (Z-Axis) Mounting Plate (to XYZ Linear Stage) Motor Controller Motor Instrument Elevation 33.0º (Y-Axis) Passive Sensor Mount Joint X Y Z Roll Axis Motor Housing Instrument Deviation 37.8º (X-Axis) 20 mm RCM Instrument Fig. 2. Figure illustrating the surgical tool instrumentation for a pair of tweezers, and the ranges of angular motion measured during the surgical Fig. 3. A CAD rendering of the wrist design. Instrument elevation and motion characterization experiment. Inset shows the orientation data pro- lateral deviation are provided by the spherical five-bar mechanism, while jected onto the surface of a sphere. rotation is handled by an 8mm motor that is coaxial with the instrument. TABLE I A COMPARISON OF VARIOUS ROBOTIC MICROSURGICAL SYSTEMS. System Target Application Mechanism Type Active DoFs SteadyHand [3] Vitroretinal XYZ Stage + Roll + Slider-crank 5 RAMS [7] Eye Serial revolute joints 6 Micron [5] Tremor reduction Parallel linkage (3-RPS) 3 IODR [4] Vitroretinal Stewart Platform + Flexible End-Effector 6+2 Our System Trauma & Plastic XYZ Stage + SFB (2-RR) + Roll 6 generally have smaller workspaces. Humans make use of tooltip (i.e. virtual RCM) and the mechanical RCM would parallel structures in manipulation tasks as well. During a be advantageous because this minimizes the control effort in ‘precision grasp’ [14] (e.g. while writing with a pen, or the XYZ stages required to cancel out the translation of the holding tweezers), two or three fingers are used to grasp and tooltip due to orientation changes. manipulate the object, forming a parallel linkage. Table I gives a list of mechanism types and the number of degrees C.