# Design and Analysis of a Magnetic Anchored and Cable-Driven Surgical Forceps for Minimally Invasive Surgery

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new surgical tool design that uses cables and magnets to reduce size while maintaining functionality for minimally invasive surgery.

## Contribution

A novel magnetic anchored and cable-driven surgical forceps design that separates motors from the manipulator to enable compactness and flexibility.

## Key findings

- The manipulator achieves three degrees of freedom (pitch, yaw, clamping) with a compact 10 mm diameter.
- Magnetic force measurements showed 5.86 N at 20 mm distance with a 5.13 N vertical load capacity.
- Ex vivo experiments validated the practicality of the prototype.

## Abstract

Magnetic surgical instruments are primarily driven by magnetic force and/or micro-motors. When micro-motors are used to drive motion, they are typically installed near the manipulator joints, resulting in a larger manipulator size due to the presence of micro-motors. We designed a magnetic anchored and cable-driven surgical forceps, which separates micro-motors from the manipulator through cables. The cables are responsible for transmitting motion and force from micro-motors to the manipulator. This design enables the integration of relatively large motors (diameter: 8 mm) while maintaining a compact overall diameter of the manipulator (diameter: 10 mm). This is beneficial for improving the flexibility of the manipulator and facilitating the coordination between surgical instruments. The manipulator of the magnetic anchored and cable-driven surgical forceps has three degrees of freedom (DoFs): pitch, yaw and clamping. A magnetic attraction experiment was conducted to measure the magnetic force on the magnetic surgical forceps with the variation of abdominal skin thickness. The results indicate that at a distance of 20 mm, the magnetic force exerted on the magnetic surgical forceps is 5.86 N, with a maximum vertical load capacity of 5.13 N. Additionally, an ex vivo experiment was conducted to validate the practicality of the magnetic anchored and cable-driven surgical forceps prototype.