Development of a novel joint protection module for minimally invasive surgery robot

Safety in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has drawn much attention since medical robots are increasingly being used in hospitals. Among all the safety assurances, mechanical safety assurance is the basic requirement for a medical robot, but traditional mechanical safety methods for industrial robots are not enough for the medical robots. In this paper, a novel type of joint protection module for MIS robots including the power transmission module, the connector module and the output shaft module is proposed, which can be used in medical robots to eliminate the hazards caused by overload and out of control of motor during MIS. Mechanical design of the novel joint protection module is discussed in the paper. Motion characteristic analysis and optimization design of the connector module is also involved. The calculation and simulation results show that the proposed joint protection module could guarantee safety under certain circumstances during MIS.