ROBOTIC SUTURING IN MINIMALLY INVASIVE SURGERY

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has the advantages of minimal bleeding and rapid postoperative recovery, which can alleviate patient suffering. Therefore, MIS is widely used in clinical applications. However, MIS is more difficult than traditional surgery; surgeons must be more meticulous when performing MIS than when performing ordinary surgery. Using a robotic arm in an auxiliary role in MIS can reduce the workload of surgeons and increase the precision and efficiency of the surgical procedure. The aim of this article is to design an MIS robot system that can perform automatic surgical suturing. First, we designed the basic control architecture for a remote-control-of-motion MIS robot with eight degrees of freedom. The surgical instrument was operated in the abdominal cavity without causing lacerations to the patient's abdomen. The surgical suture motion was then performed using the robot arm in the abdominal cavity. The correctness of the control algorithm and the surgical suture motion was verified through simulation. Finally, the feasibility of using an MIS robot for surgical suturing was verified through experiments.