This report elaborates on the PhD thesis of L.J.M van den Bedem [1] and a previous internship by M. van Eekelen [2]. Van den Bedem developed a demonstrator slave for robotic minimally invasive surgery which is used in combination with a master device. The setup consists of a pre-surgical setup and two instrument-manipulators. M. van Eekelen redesigned the TZ-manipulator and the result is a more compact manipulator with an increased range for the instrument-tube. The goal of this internship is to find similar improvements for the part of the instrument-manipulator that provides the F and ¿ DoF, called the F¿-manipulator.
The report describes the setup of the demonstrator slave and shows the changes made to the TZmanipulator. There have already been some developments on the F¿-manipulator and the realized
versions are discussed. A brief chapter is dedicated to new concepts for the manipulator and it is shown why these concepts are not preferred over the double parallelogram that is used in the current F¿-manipulator. The result is a F¿-manipulator with an increased range in ¿-direction. Furthermore, a weight reduction and an increase in stiffness is achieved. The neutral position of the TZ-manipulator is tilted forward and lowered. The parallelogram-frame is kept the same, as is the range in F-direction. The mounting positions of the TZ-manipulator are changed which leads to smaller and lighter components of the F¿-manipulator. To complete the redesign further investigation is required on the actuation in F-direction, and the double parallelogram structure could be further improved in terms of mass and stiffness, by application of finite element methods.
Internship report