Surgical Robot

Overview

A surgical robot lets a surgeon perform minimally invasive operations through small ports with greater dexterity and precision than handheld laparoscopic tools allow. The surgeon sits at a console and manipulates master controls; the system scales and filters those motions and reproduces them with wristed instruments held by robotic arms over the patient, viewing the field in magnified stereo 3D. The surgeon is always in command, the robot never acts autonomously.

The instruments and camera are carried by the Patient Cart, whose multiple robotic arms position through the body-wall ports. Each arm pivots about a remote center of motion at the port so the instrument shaft does not lever against tissue, and a cable-driven wrist near the instrument tip gives the articulation, the seven degrees of freedom, that restores the dexterity lost with rigid laparoscopic tools.

How it works

The surgeon works at the Surgeon Console, looking into a stereo viewer fed by the endoscope and gripping master tele-manipulators whose motion is scaled down and tremor-filtered before being sent to the arms. A real-time master-slave servo loop ties hand motion to instrument motion with low latency, and a redundant safety board enforces force and position limits and halts motion on fault.

Imaging and energy are managed by the Vision Cart, which houses the image-processing computer for the stereo endoscope, the LED light source, and the electrosurgical generator for cutting and coagulation. Together the three units form the system: the patient cart acts in the body, the console captures the surgeon's intent, and the vision cart provides sight and energy.