Surgical Master Console Using General-Purpose Robot Arms and a Separable Articulated Distal Interface: Porcine In-Vivo Evaluation

2026-09-27

AI Summary

This study addresses the prohibitive cost of high-performance surgical master consoles and the lack of wrist degrees of freedom (DoF) and continuous grasping interfaces in commercial haptic devices. We propose a “universal base with detachable distal adapter” architecture that combines 6-DoF robotic arms with 2-DoF direct-drive wrists to construct a low-cost bimanual master console. The system integrates pose gravity compensation, motion gating, clutch-based workspace management, and remote center of motion (RCM) constrained control, validated through Isaac Sim simulations. Achieving a hardware cost of approximately $5,500 and an end-to-end latency below 8 ms, the platform enabled uninterrupted in vivo porcine cholecystectomy without postoperative adverse signs. This work presents a highly feasible engineering paradigm for low-cost teleoperated surgery.

Abstract

High-performance surgical master consoles offer intuitive articulated manipulation but are expensive and difficult to reproduce, while accessible commercial haptic devices lack built-in interfaces for surgical wrist articulation and continuous grasp. We present a laparoscopic master in which general-purpose robot manipulators provide the programmable base and surgical-specific interaction is concentrated in a separable distal adapter. Each 6-DoF arm carries a custom 2-DoF direct-drive wrist, continuous grasp sensing, and clutch-based workspace management; the complete bimanual hardware costs approximately US$5,500, below common bimanual commercial haptic references. To support sustained hand-guided use, we characterize current scaling, gravity, and break-away friction and use them for posture-dependent gravity compensation and motion-gated assistance, reducing continuous actuation and thermal loading. A common master state drives either Isaac Sim or an RCM-constrained dual-FR3 platform. Master-state publication to FR3 target update adds at most 8 ms, and tip tracking shows 0.31-0.66 mm mean delay-aligned residuals. In a porcine cholecystectomy experiment, five common operator-side metrics and hand/tip-speed distributions were compared descriptively with human in-vivo telemetry from 120 clinical Versius recordings of 99 cholecystectomy procedures; no interruption originated from the master console, and no abnormal clinical signs were recorded during the 7-day postoperative observation period. These results demonstrate a surgical master built from general-purpose robot arms with surgical-specific interaction concentrated in a separable distal interface.

Problem

• surgical master console
• haptic device
• robotic surgery
• wrist articulation
• cost-effective

Innovation

• surgical master console
• general-purpose robot arms
• separable distal interface
• gravity compensation
• in-vivo evaluation