Julien Mintenbeck

Design of a modular, flexible instrument with integrated DC-motors for minimal invasive robotic surgery

This paper proposes a novel concept of a flexible instrument for minimal invasive robotic surgery. The focus of this snake-like manipulator is to reduce the trauma for the patient and a shorter time of hospital stay. Furthermore the performance of complex interventions will be simplified due to the wide range of instruments degrees of freedom. The mechanism of this manipulator is built of several modular segments, which are linked to each other. The two DC-motors inside the segments submit the required two DoFs for generating a 3d pathway. The design of the mechanical parts, sensors and a concept for the control system will be presented in this paper. A simulation environment with an associated mathematical model is also implemented.

Design, modelling and control of a hyper-redundant 3-RPS parallel mechanism

In this paper, we describe the development of a hyper-constrained serial robot-assembly, which will lead do a snake-like kinematic. The goal of this robot is to serve as an experimental platform for a medical catheter for human surgery. We have two kinds of platform kinematics, namely the microscopic one, which depends of a three-actuator-solution, which gives us a 3-DOF1 moveability of the microscopic TCP (tool center point). The assembly of those microscopic units in a serial manner finally leads to a snake-like robot kinematic. Using MATLAB, we established a mathematical model for simulation, which can be fully integrated into the control loop for the different actuators. With the help of rapid prototyping(RP), we built up a physical model, which is actually in a testing phase.

ROS-Based Cognitive Surgical Robotics

The case study at hand describes our ROS-based setup for robot-assisted (minimally-invasive) surgery. The system includes different perception components (Kinects, Time-of-Flight Cameras, Endoscopic Cameras, Marker-based Trackers, Ultrasound), input devices (Force Dimension Haptic Input Devices), robots (KUKA LWRs, Universal Robots UR5, ViKY Endoscope Holder), surgical instruments and augmented reality displays. Apart from bringing together the individual components in a modular and flexible setup, many subsystems have been developed based on combinations of the single components. These subsystems include a bimanual telemanipulator, multiple Kinect people tracking, knowledge-based endoscope guidance and ultrasound tomography. The platform is not a research project in itself, but a basic infrastructure used for various research projects. We want to show how to build a large robotics platform, in fact a complete lab setup, based on ROS. It is flexible and modular enough to do research on different robotics related questions concurrently. The whole setup is running on ROS Indigo and Ubuntu Trusty (14.04). A repository of already open sourced components is available at https://github.com/KITmedical.

Flexible instrument for minimally invasive robotic surgery using rapid prototyping technology for fabrication

The use of flexible instruments in the context of minimally-invasive robotic surgery poses a curiosity. This is because of the cleavage of flexibility, stiffness and the small size of the manipulators. Focusing on the medical point of view, flexible instruments enables an improved handling for more complex interventions and a shortened hospital stay and trauma reduction for the patient. In this paper a 3d printed cable-driven instrument with four degrees of freedom is described. Additionally the instrument is prepared for shape sensors and an autonomous tool can be attached at the tip. The instrument can be actuated by an optional DC-motor or hydraulic system. Finally, a corresponding mechanical model including a simulation and the first results are illustrated.

EndoSnake—A Single-Arm-Multi-Port MIRS System with Flexible Instruments

Recently, the use of robotic assisted systems for minimally invasive surgery has increased. This is due to the precise manipulation and miniaturisation of the used equipment. The systems can be divided into multi-port and single-port robots, both with the aim of trauma reduction but with different approaches. On the one hand there are multiple robots, one with each instrument or camera and on the other hand there are small flexible instruments and only one incision in the abdominal wall. In this paper, a novel robotic system is presented that combines in a hybrid way the prior described characteristics and continues the medical aims of trauma reduction and surgeon comfort. One single lightweight robot with three individual configurable flexible instruments is being researched. Additionally, the modular hardware and software architecture is based on the open-source idea and rapid-manufacturing processes.

A three-armed slave-manipulator with snake-like instruments for laparoscopic surgery

The use and development of robotic systems in the clinical context is steadily increasing. In this paper, a novel, mechatronics fully-integrated and hybrid robotic system for minimally invasive surgery is presented. The focus for this work is to combine the advantages of the existing systems like MultiPort, Single-Port or NOTES. Through the use of three flexible instruments there exists a completely free steerable end-effector for surgical procedures. In addition to the described mechanical and electrical components, a modular concept is presented, in which the individual tools can be combined and interchanges arbitrarily. This is possible due to a ROS-based middleware infrastructure, which uses both network and bus technologies.

Microman - autonomous omni-directional microrobot-system for biotechnological and miniaturized automation

In this paper we present a new autonomous mobile robot for research focused on the field of biotechnology and miniaturized automation. The robot “Microman”, itself is modular structured by a basic and functional unit. With a diameter of 50mm and an omni-directional driving system the robot is able to move in comparison to other systems in a very limited area. Due to the wireless charging system in combination with a variety of different contactless sensors the use in contaminated applications is possible. In addition the robot comes with a versatile arena with several application modules, which are described in the system overview. Here a cell screening application is selected. The mechanical and electrical design as well as the novel color-based navigation system and first results complete this paper.