Design of a 6 DOF parallel manipulator for micro-positioning surgical robot and its forward kinematic analysis with the tetrahedron approach

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to design and analyze the kinematic features of a 6-dof parallel manipulator with a wrist structure suitable for micro-positioning surgical tasks and to develop the proposed manipulator. There is one other thing that is important for this dissertation. It is to propose a generalized formulation methodology for the forward kinematics of the 6-dof parallel manipulators. Recently, in order to surmount surgical environmental and physical problems during performing surgical operations, surgery robots among advanced medical robots have been developed to achieve the better surgical performance in various fields of conventional surgery. A surgery robot is an integration of a surgeon``s expertise and skill with advanced robotic technology. Because the micro-positioning surgical tasks should be carefully performed by a surgical specialist with miniaturized precision tools, development of a surgical manipulator with high precise positioning capability can provide significant advantages in overcoming their operational difficulties. Five advanced micro-positioning surgical tasks employed robotic technologies have been analyzed based on their current technological background and expertise. From the analysis results and the conceptual modeling of the surgeon`` hand motion, requirements of a surgical manipulator for the micro-positioning surgical tasks are defined. A new 6-dof parallel manipulator with the wrist structure are proposed under considering the requirements. The proposed manipulator has six linear actuating links, a conical moving platform and a flat base platform. Three linear actuating links among six, called external actuating links, are connected at three spherical joints on the moving platform and the other three, called internal actuating links, are connected at a specially designed spherical joint on the vertex of the conical moving platform. The manipulator can generate 3-dof pure orientations by driving only the three ...