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Minimally invasive surgery and more specifically endoscopic surgery is a surgical technique aiming to improve patient treatment and recovery by using natural orifices rather than incisions. However, this is at the cost of increased complexity for the surgeon and limits the number of procedures that can be performed. The recent introduction of robotic technology in the operating room has allowed to overcome most of the challenges faced during minimally invasive surgery, but further research needs to be done to develop robotic endoscopy. This thesis introduces a novel endoscopic robot called the i²Snake, an acronym for intuitive, imaging, sensing, navigated, and kinetically enhanced. The i²Snake is a snake-like robot with a fully actuated body and four instrument channels: 1x for a camera with light, 2x for a pair of robotic instruments and 1x for suction/irrigation. Several aspects of the design and control of the system are tackled in this thesis. Firstly, the state-of-the-art in medical robotics is studied in detail to determine the current trends and identify the existing gaps and needs for such robotic platforms. This is followed by a chapter on the mechanical design of the i²Snake. The design proposes an optimized rolling-joint to improve stability and joint range. The robot also uses a novel tendon routing to minimize cross-talk between joints and to allow formation of complex configurations such as S-shapes. The third chapter focuses on the design of the robotic instruments. This is accomplished by using recorded surgical trajectories combined with a genetic algorithm to automatically design an optimized pair of instruments. The fourth and fifth chapters focus on teleoperation and navigation to ensure intuitive full-body shape control and navigation. Finally, the last chapter discusses the operating room ergonomics and introduces novel features for safe and intuitive manipulation of the robotic platform. Open Access |
