An external positioning mechanism for robotic surgery

Abstract

Robotic surgery is rapidly being adopted as one of the most important new techniques especially in laparoscopic surgery. Yet the only currently commercially available surgery robot, although very successful, has several evident drawbacks, most prominently its large size. A completely different approach for teleoperated minimally invasive surgery is proposed here, based on a parallel structure as external positionner and an internal micro-manipulator inserted into the body through a single port as known from mini-invasive surgery. The main features of the entirely novel external positioning mechanism will be presented in this contribution.