A Modular Lockable Mechanism for Tendon-Driven Robots: Design, Modeling and Characterization

Surgical robots with variable stiffness can provide more stable configurations during minimally-invasive surgery.This letter presents a new design of modular lockable mechanism which can be used to change the stiffness of tendon-driven surgical robots. Locking and unlocking are simply actuated by pu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE robotics and automation letters Vol. 7; no. 2; pp. 2023 - 2030
Main Authors Lin, Botao, Wang, Jiaole, Song, Shuang, Li, Bing, Meng, Max Q.-H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Piscataway IEEE 01.04.2022
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects
Bending
lockable mechanism
Locking
Medical robotics
modular
Modular design
Robotic surgery
Robots
Shape
Springs
Stiffness
Surgery
surgical robot
tendon-driven
Tendons
Variable stiffness
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Summary:Surgical robots with variable stiffness can provide more stable configurations during minimally-invasive surgery.This letter presents a new design of modular lockable mechanism which can be used to change the stiffness of tendon-driven surgical robots. Locking and unlocking are simply actuated by pulling one tendon, and each mechanism has several fixed locking angles on the joint. Consisting of this modular mechanism, a tendon-driven robot has a larger workspace and the variable stiffness. The robot shape can be maintained by the modular mechanisms rather than continuous external input. Both kinematic and shape compensation models of the robot have also been proposed. Results from simulations and experiments on the prototype have validated the locking capability of the proposed mechanism and the accuracy of the proposed models of the modular tendon-driven robots.
ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2022.3142907