Anatomy specifications for the design of a robotic laparoscope
Résumé
The main goal of this paper is to present a design specification study of a flexible robotic laparoscope which is intended to explore the liver surface using an echographic probe to precisely determine the localization of the cancerous tumors. A first step in the design is to determine the minimum length and the minimum number of links required by the anatomy environment. The key issue of this step is to solve an optimization problem. It corresponds to find the maximum length and the maximum curvature necessary between the insertion area and the exploration surface of the liver. In the first part a short overview concerning significant related works is presented as well as the medical context of our study. Then, the design context on the medical requirements, on the environment geometry and on the mechanical structure chosen for the laparoscope is given. The optimization problem is presented in the third part. Finally, the last part of this paper presents the conclusions of the study but also the perspectives concerning the actuation and the control strategy