Motion Control of a Master–Slave Minimally Invasive Surgical Robot Based on the Hand-Eye-Coordination

During a robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery, the surgeon controls the surgical instruments insides the patient’s body through teleoperation. For the surgeon, the endoscope and the surgical instruments insides the patient’s body are just like his/her own “eyes” and “hands” extended in space. Hence the motion alignment between the master control handles and the end effectors of the associated slave manipulators should be carefully designed so as to maximally coordinate the “hand” and the eye of the surgeon, which can give the surgeon the same feeling as carrying out an open surgery. However, for different types of master–slave minimally invasive surgical robots, how to design the master–slave motion aligning strategy to realize “How You Move Is What You See”, is still not answered in relative researches. In this paper, we will try to find an answer to this question.