Design of a modular spherical robot for surgical applications
Keywords:
Spherical robot, design and dimensional optimization, singularity-free workspace, experimental model, dynamic balancingAbstract
The paper presents the design and experimental model of a spherical robot with dynamic balancing of the end-effector for highly accurate tasks covering medical applications. The robot is specially designed to perform different tasks based on the concept of the Remote Centre of Motion (RCM), suitable for the manipulation of objects located in a sealed environment with a specific access port. The specific advantages of an architecturally constrained RCM are demonstrated in terms of safety in operation, ease of control, and motion decomposition. The mechanism is balanced to allow a large working envelope with minimum torque variations for the actuators, improving both accuracy and stiffness. A case study is presented where the end-effector is represented by a dexterous surgical instrument, which adds four additional degrees of freedom to the gripper along demonstrating through a mathematical model the specific gains in accuracy and stiffness. Through computer-based simulations, the specific advantages of the balancing mechanism are illustrated along with a simple solution that enables the robot to adapt to different end-effectors and working loads. In addition to these aspects, the experimental model of the robot with command and control logic developed based on a master-slave architecture is also presented, which allows the surgeon to remotely control the instrument attached to the proposed solution.
References
TUCAN, P., VAIDA, C., HORVATH, D., CAPRARIU, A., BURZ, A., GHERMAN, B., IAKAB, S., PISLA, D., Design and Experimental Setup of a Robotic Medical Instrument for Brachytherapy in Non-Resectable Liver Tumors, Cancers, 14, 23, p. 5841., 2022, https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14235841.
PANESAR, S., CAGLE, Y., CHANDER, D., MOREY, J., FERNANDEZ-MIRANDA, J., KLIOT, M., Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Surgical Robotics, Annals of Surgery, 270, 2, pp. 223-226, 2019.
PLITEA, N., HESSELBACH, J., VAIDA, C., RAATZ, A., PISLA, D., BUDDE, C., VLAD, L., BURISCH, A., SENNER, R., Innovative development of surgical parallel robots, Acta Electronica Mediamira Scientia, Cluj-Napoca, 4, pp. 201-206, 2007.
GEORGE, E., I., BRAND, T., C., LaPORTA, A., MARESCAUX, J., SATAVA, R., M., Origins of Robotic Surgery: From Skepticism to Standard of Care, JSLS: Journal of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons, 22, 4, e2018.00039, 2018.
CORNEJO, J., PERALES-VILLARROEL, P., SEBASTIAN, R., CORNEJO-AGUILAR, J., A., Conceptual design of space biosurgeon for robotic surgery and aerospace medicine, In 2020 IEEE ANDESCON, pp. 1-6, 2020.
ZHANG, W., LI, H., CUI, L., ZHANG, X., FANG, S., ZHANG, Q., Research progress and development trend of the surgical robot and surgical instrument arm, The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, 17, 5, e2309, 2021.
MARCUS, H., J., RAMIREZ, P., T., KHAN, D., Z., LAYARD HORSFALL, H., HANRAHAN, J., G., WILLIAMS, S., C., et al., The IDEAL framework for surgical robotics: development, comparative evaluation, and long-term monitoring, Nature medicine, 30, 1, pp. 61-75, 2024.
FERRO, M., MIRANTE, A., FICUCIELLO, F., VENDITTELLI, M., A CoppeliaSim dynamic simulator for the da Vinci research kit, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 8, 1, pp. 129-136, 2022.
WEI, B., ZHANG, D., A review of dynamic balancing for robotic mechanisms, Robotica, 39, 1, pp. 55-71, 2021.
GARBENS, A., MORGAN, T., CADEDDU, J., A., Single Port Robotic Surgery in Urology, Current Urology Reports, 22, 4, article 22, 2021.
HUTCHINS, A., R., MANSON, R., J., LEREBOURS, R., FARJAT, A., E., COX, M. L., MANN, B., P., ZANI, S., Objective Assessment of the Early Stages of the Learning Curve for the Senhance Surgical Robotic System, Journal of Surgical Education, 76, 1, pp. 201-214, 2019.
HUSCHER, C., MARCHEGIANI, F., COBELLIS, F., TEJEDOR, P., PASTOR, C., LAZZARIN, G., WHEELER, J., DI SAVERIO, S., Robotic oncologic colorectal surgery with a new robotic platform (CMR Versius): hope or hype? A preliminary experience from a full-robotic case-series, Tech. Coloproctol., 26, pp. 745-753, 2022.
PISLA, D., BIRLESCU, I., CRI?AN, N., PUSCA, A., ANDRA?, I., TUCAN, P., RADU, C., GHERMAN, B., VAIDA, C., Singularity Analysis and Geometric Optimization of a 6-DOF Parallel Robot for SILS, Machines, 10, 9, 764, 2022.
RUS, G., ANDRAS, I., VAIDA, C., CRISAN, N., GHERMAN, B., RADU, C., TUCAN, P., IAKAB, S., AL HAJJAR, N., PISLA, D., Artificial Intelligence-Based Hazard Detection in Robotic-Assisted Single-Incision Oncologic Surgery, Cancers, 15, 13, article 3387, 2023.
VAIDA, C., ANDRAS, I., BIRLESCU, I., CRISAN, N., PLITEA, N., PISLA, D., Preliminary control design of a Single-Incision Laparoscopic Surgery Robotic System, Proc. 25th Int. Conf. on System Theory, Control and Computing (ICSTCC), Iasi, Romania, pp. 384-389, 2021.
PISLA, D., PLITEA, N., VIDEAN, A., PRODAN, B., GHERMAN, B., LESE, D., Kinematics and design of two variants of a reconfigurable parallel robot, in: Proceedings of the ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots, London, UK, 24 July 2009.
SADEGHIAN, H., ZOKAEI, F., HADIAN JAZI, S., Constrained Kinematic Control in Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery Subject to Remote Center of Motion Constraint, J. Intell. Robot. Syst., 95, pp. 901-913, 2019.
TUCAN, P., VAIDA, C., ULINICI, I., BANICA, A., BURZ, A., POP, N., BIRLESCU, I., GHERMAN, B., PLITEA, N., ANTAL, T., et al., Optimization of the ASPIRE Spherical Parallel Rehabilitation Robot Based on Its Clinical Evaluation, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18, 3281, 2021, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18063281.
VAIDA, C., BIRLESCU, I., PUSCA, A., GHERMAN, B., TUCAN, P., ANTAL, T., A., PISLA, D., Geometric Modeling of a New Modular Spherical Robotic System for Single Incision Laparoscopic Surgery, in: MÜLLER, Andreas, BRANDSTÖTTER, Michael (eds), Advances in Service and Industrial Robotics, Proc. Int. Conf. RAAD 2022, Mechanisms and Machine Science, 120, pp. 367-374, 2022.
SHIN, H., J., SEO, S., W., LEE, Da Hyun, LEE, Mee-Ran, Robotic single-port surgery using the da Vinci SP® surgical system for benign gynecologic disease: A preliminary report, Journal of Minimally Invasive Gynecology, 27, 1, pp. 139-145, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmig.2019.08.018.
KUNZ, L., A Review of the Role of Robotics in Surgery: To da Vinci and Beyond, ResearchGate Preprint, November 2023, Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375447953, available online 20.08.25.
CMR SURGICAL, Versius Overview - Product Brochure, Cambridge, UK, Promedica-Praha, June 2023. Available at: https://www.promedica-praha.cz - available online 20.08.25.
FDA, Decision Summary DEN230078: Versius Surgical System, United States Food and Drug Administration, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, 2023.
ASENSUS SURGICAL, Senhance Surgical System - System Description and Features, 2023.,Available at: https://www.asensus.com/senhance, available online 20.08.25.
RUS, G., VAIDA, C., VANTA, O., MURESAN, A., et al., The Control Architecture of a Spherical Robot for Minimally Invasive Surgery, In: LOVASZ, E.C., CECCARELLI, M., CIUPE, V. (eds), Mechanism Design for Robotics, MEDER 2024, Mechanisms and Machine Science, 166, Springer, Cham, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67383-2_45.
Published
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2025 The Romanian Journal of Technical Sciences. Applied Mechanics.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.