Static balancing and inertia compensation of a master manipulator for tele-operated surgical robot application

Abstract

Tele-operated robotic surgery is becoming popular and there is a need for design of better robotic arms for increased dexterity and user convenience. In the master-slave configuration of surgical robots, master manipulator plays an important role in ensuring user comfort and dexterity. The design and analysis of a master arm with 6 DOF with a wrist decoupled configuration is presented here. Primary focus of the design is to reduce the number of balancing masses required. By strategically positioning the joint axes, the balancing requirement for some of the axes has been eliminated. Also, through proper design modifications, remote placement of balancing masses has been achieved which reduces the net inertia of the system. Static balancing of the arm is analysed and an optimal design to achieve the balancing is presented. The residual imbalance is corrected through inertia compensation using feed forward control. The design details of the arm, its kinematic analysis, and balancing are presented in this paper. � 2015 ACM.