SCALPP: A 6-DOF Robot with a Non-Spherical Wrist for Surgical Applications

This paper deals with an ongoing research program in robotized reconstructive surgery. The constraints of skin harvesting are first described in terms of medical and robotics constraints. In a second part, thanks to a CAD system and a kinematic study, we analyse various mechanical structures and we show that they cannot satisfy our needs regarding singularity free motions. Finally, we propose a robot architecture — a 6 degree-of-freedom manipulator with a non-spherical wrist whose interesting features are a simple and closed-form solution to the Inverse Kinematics Model, the ability to move the tool without collision with the robot links and a simple mechanical design.