Development of a Master-Slave System with Force-Sensing Abilities using Pneumatic Actuators for Laparoscopic Surgery

摘要

In minimally invasive telesurgical systems, displaying the forces measured at the slave side is an important issue. The ability to accurately feel the force being applied at the slave side is important. This paper describes a slave manipulator, which has 7 d.o.f. and is driven by pneumatic actuators, newly designed and developed for use in minimally invasive surgery. Then, a master-slave system is constructed using the master device we have developed. In the system, we applied a different impedance control for each manipulator. We adopted a force-control type of impedance control without a force sensor for the pneumatic slave manipulator. For the master manipulator, we used a motion-control type of impedance control. The experimental results indicate that the operator feels the force at the slave side with an uncertainty of about 1.5 N. The effectiveness of the force feedback using the developed system is demonstrated.