Simulation for optimal design of hand-held surgical robots.

Hand-held surgical robots are manipulators with dexterous effectors to be used by surgeons in minimally invasive surgery and especially in laparoscopy. Mechanical manipulators for laparoscopy have appeared on the markets in recent years with various interfaces and dexterities. 2 examples are RealHand and Laparo-Angle. The question of which interface and control mode is the best has not been answered yet. Also, the effector kinematics has not been studied much. We have made a simulator to study the robot's interface, control mode and kinematics to design a hand-held surgical robot for laparoscopic surgery. We asked test subjects to use the simulator and try to make sutures in a virtual environment. Users opinion is that a joystick as interface is easier to use, compared to a jointed interface translating hand's orientation to that of the effector. It appears that a 6 DOF effector coupled to the shaft is necessary and dexterous enough to make sutures in different angles.