Ex-vivo suturing trial with a 5-DoF robot arm for flexible endoscopic surgery robot

Abstract

Safe and reliable closure for perforation or defect is an important but challenging issue in endoscopic surgery. This paper presents a preliminary results of developing and testing of a robotic suturing for endoscopic surgery. A five degree of freedom robot arm with needle driver at the tip has been developed considering functional requirements for suturing, and it is integrated to the flexible endoscopic surgery robot system. An ex-vivo suturing test was performed with a porcine large intestine to validate the feasibility of the proposed method. The experimental result demonstrated that suturing with the proposed surgical robot arm was feasible that the stitching and knot tying procedure could be performed within a confined space.