Development of a robotic surgical system for total knee joint replacement

This paper discusses a robotic surgical system for total knee joint replacement. The system construction from preoperative assist system to bone-cutting robot is proposed. According to the examined system overview, a development of the bone-cutting system is presented as a main issue of this paper. The characteristic feature of the bone-cutting robot is to establish high rigidity, high cutting accuracy, high operability and high safety. These performances can be achieved by well-designed hardware mechanisms and degree-of-freedom configuration of the robot. In the last part, model bone cutting experiments prove the validity of the system compared with the conventional method using a bone saw. To be specific, the waviness of the machined surface and the error of the edge angle which affect fitness to the artificial knee have been improved dramatically.