| description abstract | Benefiting from small incisions, reduced risk of infection, less pain, and fast recovery, minimally invasive surgery has shown tremendous advantages for patients. In these kinds of procedures, remote center-of-motion (RCM) mechanisms play an important role in performing operations through small incisions. Inspired by the Peaucellier–Lipkin straight-line cell, this paper presents the design and verification of a new type of planar two degree-of-freedom (DOF) RCM mechanism. A synthesized planar RCM mechanism is realized by a symmetric linkage actuated by two circular motion generators. The main merit of the proposed 2DOF RCM mechanism is its straightforward kinematics, which results in a simple control scheme. One of the candidate mechanisms, which is simple in structure and easy to fabricate, is intensively investigated. A prototype was built, on which preliminary experiments have been conducted, to verify the feasibility of the proposed new mechanism. The experimental results show that the fabricated 2DOF prototype has a nearly stationary remote center of motion. Therefore, the prototype has potential applicability in robot-assisted minimally invasive surgeries. | |
