Surgical robotic arm control for tissue ablation.

ABSTRACT

In the technology driven era, robot assisted surgery is gradually emerging as a revolutionized surgical procedure over traditional laparoscopic method. Despite the concerns about robotic surgery for minimally invasive surgical procedures, robotized surgical arms have been used in many hospitals. Certain surgical procedures require removal of a segment of an organ or body part like excision biopsy, linear thin layer of soft tissue, triangular mass, and tangential excision in burn management, where shaving-off at an angle of the tissue layer to be removed. For such minimally invasive procedures, we have designed a surgical arm governed by a rotary flexible joint. The surgical arm has a medical grade scalpel in its one end and the other end is connected to a D.C. servo motor. The motion of the surgical arm is controlled by the newly designed non-integer order controller. We have experimentally demonstrated the functioning of the surgical arm by ablating the tissue in-vitro. Our surgical robotic arm is cost effective, high precision and free from potential human errors.