Miniature Manipulator Design and Cartesian Control for Minimally Invasive Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery

This paper presents a miniature manipulator under Cartesian control for minimally invasive transluminal endoscopic surgery. The manipulator had four degrees of freedom (DoFs) and a diameter of only 3.5 mm. The compact size of the manipulator allowed it to pass through the instrument channel of the endoscope, and its high dexterity allowed it to perform most of the operations in endoscopic surgery such as marking, grasping, hanging, etc. The implicit function relationship in the kinematics of the continuum manipulator was analyzed. By introducing the regression analysis method, the analytical form of the inverse kinematics was obtained. The distribution of singularities in the manipulator workspace was analyzed with emphasis. The presence of singularities made Cartesian mapping control between the primary side and secondary side impossible. By introducing the smoothing method of the joint trajectory, the discontinuity of the joint velocity at the singularity was avoided and the primary–secondary mapping under Cartesian control was realized. The trajectory-tracking experiment proved that the smoothness of the joint trajectory could make the manipulator smoothly pass through the singularity. The fixed-point marking experiment proved that the Cartesian control could improve the intuition of operation and the efficiency of task completion. Comprehensive performance experiments showed that the manipulator had enough dexterity to execute complex operations.