K-FLEX: A flexible robotic platform for scar-free endoscopic surgery
Hwang, Kwon (2020) K-FLEX: A flexible robotic platform for scar-free endoscopic surgery Int J Med Robot (IF: -1) 16(2) e2078Abstract
Despite its high lesion accessibility and versatility, endoscopic platforms have suffered from designing flexible manipulators with high payload capability sufficient to perform advanced endoscopic procedures.A flexible robotic platform, K-FLEX, has been developed with a design of 17 mm in overall diameter. To overcome the shape distortion and deflection in payload handling, a strong continuum manipulator has been designed to have maximum resistance to the distortion. The kinematic analysis and mapping strategy have been established for the master-slave teleoperation.The proposed manipulator has shown 7.5 mm in trajectory variation to lift the weight of 300 g. Finally, the feasibility of the integrated K-FLEX system has been verified through three kinds of simulated surgical tasks.The initial prototype of the proposed robot showed the possibility of advanced endoscopic surgery with improved payload capability.© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Links
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31945797http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/rcs.2078
