Development of a surgical robot for single-port surgery and its position tracking control

This paper discusses the development of a novel surgical robot for single-port surgery (SPS) and proposes use of the robot´s position control method, which is based on inverse kinematics. The developed surgical robot consists of two forceps manipulators and two robotic arms and can achieve a forceps placement called “rotation formation” that makes it possible to enlarge a surgical-instrument work space from that used with conventional forceps formation. The position control method was derived using the Jacobian matrix and Newton´s method. To evaluate the accuracy of the developed surgical robot and the tracking performance of its position control method, position control experiments were conducted; the experimental results are presented here.