Kinematic and Ergonomic Design of a Robotic Arm for Precision Laparoscopic Surgery

TL;DR

This paper designs a 7-DOF robotic arm for laparoscopic surgery, focusing on kinematic and ergonomic improvements to enhance precision, efficiency, and surgeon comfort, validated through simulated surgical tasks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ergonomic and kinematic design for a surgical robotic arm with improved accuracy and reduced operator strain, validated via simulated tasks.

Findings

Targeting accuracy reduced by over 50%

Task completion times shortened

Operator muscle strain decreased significantly

Abstract

Robotic assistance in minimally invasive surgery can greatly enhance surgical precision and reduce surgeon fatigue. This paper presents a focused investigation on the kinematic and ergonomic design principles for a laparoscopic surgical robotic arm aimed at high-precision tasks. We propose a 7-degree-of-freedom (7-DOF) robotic arm system that incorporates a remote center of motion (RCM) at the instrument insertion point and ergonomic considerations to improve surgeon interaction. The design is implemented on a general-purpose robotic platform, and a series of simulated surgical tasks were performed to evaluate targeting accuracy, task efficiency, and surgeon comfort compared to conventional manual laparoscopy. Experimental results demonstrate that the optimized robotic design achieves significantly improved targeting accuracy (error reduced by over 50%) and shorter task completion times, while substantially lowering operator muscle strain and discomfort. These findings validate the importance of kinematic optimization (such as added articulations and tremor filtering) and human-centered ergonomic design in enhancing the performance of robot-assisted surgery. The insights from this work can guide the development of next-generation surgical robots that improve surgical outcomes and ergonomics for the operating team.