Telesurgical Robotics and a Kinematic Perspective

The advent of Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) in surgical theaters has revolutionized the centuriesold art of surgery for various surgical procedures. After rapidly gaining its momentum in 1990s, MIS offered huge benefits over the traditional open-surgery techniques. Details of which can be found in (Satava, 2004; Lanfranco, 2004; Holt, 2004; Taylor, 2006; Kuo C. H., 2009; Nisar, 2015). Along with its revolutionary advantages, MIS proved to be a tedious and cumbersome technique for surgeons. For safety and better efficacy, it requires well-trained and skillful surgeons to carry out the surgical procedures. When compared with open-surgery, MIS techniques adversely affect surgeons’ ability of direct-sight, sense-of-touch, depth perception and kinesthetic feel. These issues, along with numerous others pose serious challenges to medical doctors and surgeons when performing MIS procedures. Surgical robotics, primarily, emerged as a very effective solution to the above-mentioned problems and many other related issues. With the passage of time, these robots started taking the role of augmenters and led to the emergence of many innovative, safer, better and user-friendly features pertaining to various MIS procedures. This gave huge impetus to the ongoing research in this field and grabbed a lot of attention from researchers of many mutually varying fields of research. While industry has played an important role, it had been the academia that remained at the forefront of the research in surgical robotics. Being in operation theaters for roughly more than two decades, surgical robots have demonstrated their potential towards the betterment of surgical procedures and general degree of efficacy (Taylor, 2006; Nisar, 2015). Enhanced precision, greater control over maneuvers, scalable movements and tremor-free tool motion with tactile feedback are some of the sublime features of today’s surgical robots. Increased trust of surgeons, medical practitioners (Chitwood, 2001) and, even of the patients, on the use of robots for medical and surgical purposes is becoming a hallmark of this technology. With every new development, the overall size and weight of surgical robots is shrinking while the reliability and safety margins are expanding. Behind every successful surgical robot, a number of technical and non-technical factors play an important role. For example, kinematics, dynamics, control and manufacturability are some of the technical aspects of a design. Kinematics being the first and foremost manipulator design step is considered as the lynchpin of performance for any surgical robot. It is a fundamental aspect of any mechanical design (Kuo C. H., 2012) and plays a decisive role in ascertaining its capabilities and viability vis-à-vis applications. A sound kinematic design is better posed to offer greater performance measures in terms of safety, reliability and surgical task-achievement (Kuo C. H., 2009). Kinematic design acts as a foundation block for the rest of surgical robotic system to be built over. A dismal kinematic design could severely limit the capaSajid Nisar National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan