Telemanipulator for remote minimally invasive surgery

The requirements for an ideal telemanipulator (i.e., robot and surgical instrument) are derived. An overview on telemanipulators reported in literature is given. The new robot for telepresence surgery developed by German Aerospace Center (DLR) is presented in detail in the "DLR Robot" section. Surgical instruments equipped with miniaturized force-torque sensors and additional DoF at the distal end, also developed by DLR, are described in the "DLR Instruments" section. The last section concludes this article and gives directions for further research.