Article intro: the MUSHA Hand II
Abstract
"Although substantial progresses have been made in robot-assisted
laparoscopic surgery, the graspers for existing surgical systems
generally remain non-sensorized forceps design with limited functions.
This paper presents the design, development and preliminary evaluation
of the MUSHA Hand II, a multifunctional hand with force sensors for
robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery. The proposed hand has three
snake-like underactuated fingers that can be folded into a 12 mm
cylindrical form. Each finger has a three-axis force sensor, to provide
force information. After been deployed into an abdominal cavity, the
hand can be configured to either grasper mode, retractor mode or
palpation mode for different tasks. Underactuated finger design enhances
the adaptivity in grasping and the compliance in interaction with the
environment. In addition, fingertip force sensors can be utilized for
palpation to obtain a real-time stiffness map of organs. Using the da
Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) as a robotic testbed, the functionality of the
hand has been demonstrated and experiments have been conducted,
including robotic palpation and organ manipulation. The results suggest
that the hand can effectively enhance the functionality of a robotic
surgical system and overcome the limits on force sensing introduced by
the use of robots in laparoscopic surgery."
See some earlier results of the project here.
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