Control and user interface design for compact manipulators in minimally-invasive surgery

This paper describes the control system and user command interfaces developed for a lightweight, compact, endoscope camera manipulator prototype for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery. A complete teleoperated minimally invasive surgical system in development is also based on using lightweight, compact manipulators with simple, reliable, and robust controllers. The endoscope manipulator is controlled by a single-board computer and individual motor controllers. The single-board computer processes user commands and generates control mode and analog velocity commands for the motor controllers. A miniature keypad attached to one of the surgical instruments and a voice recognition system with a foot pedal are used as user command interfaces