Development of Actively-controllable endoscopic forceps

An endoscopic forceps is one of the efficient medical device in minimally invasive surgery. However, the endoscopic forceps has two big problems. First is the endoscopic forceps has friction, and it nonlinearly changes depend on posture of the endoscopic forceps. The friction cause deterioration of operation performance. Second is the endoscopic forceps has only 1-DOF for grasping motion. Therefore, in this paper, Actively-controllable endoscopic forceps is developed. This endoscopic forceps has 2-DOF which are for grasping motion and bending motion. By bending motion, the endoscopic forceps can keep or change posture by itself. In addition, friction associated with changing posture of the endoscopic forceps is modeled by least-square method. Finally, the friction models are applied to bilateral control system. Friction of the endoscopic forceps is compensated, and improvement of operational performance is achieved.