Design, Teleoperation Control and Experimental Validation of a Dexterous Robotic Flexible Endoscope for Laparoscopic Surgery

Existing robotic endoscopes for laparoscopic surgery, predominantly rigid or limited in dexterity, occupy a large motion space1, The large occupied motion space necessitates large incisions and reduces the motion space for surgeons to simultaneously operate other surgical instruments. Meanwhile, surgeons only have limited view adjustment capability to avoid occlusion and they often have to lift/push some organs to observe occluded target lesions in some operations such as cholecystectomy. The situation gets worse when the operations are on obese patients. In this paper, we develop a novel dexterous robotic flexible endoscope (DRFE), which is comprised of a concentric cable-driven structure and a 2-DoF articulated joint attached to the end of DRFE, for laparoscopic surgery. The proposed design occupies much less motion space both inside and outside human body as compared to conventional robotic flexible endoscopes. When used in surgery, the part of the endoscope outside the body can remain still, which reduces the risk of expanding the incision and simplifies the structure of the remote center mechanism. Simulation and experimental studies are performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed device in the improvement of vision occlusion and usability. Initial results reveal that the DRFE is highly dexterous and accurate in observing lesions with vision occlusion.