Engineering Commons^™

Design And Assembly Of Parabolic Flight Payload To Evaluate Miniature In Vivo Surgical Robots In Microgravity, Kearney M. Lackas

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Laparoscopic surgery, also known as minimally invasive surgery (MIS), changed the face of surgery in the 1990s. With these procedures, surgeons use long, slender tools which pass through several small incisions. Performing surgery in this fashion has shown many benefits including reduced pain and recovery times, lower costs, and less scarring post-recovery.

The use of surgical robotics has shown several key advantages over MIS techniques. Minimally invasive surgeries typically require unnatural movements, have limited visibility, greatly reduce dexterity, and provide little tactile feedback. Through robot kinematics and specialized sensors, surgical robots can resolve many of these limitations, especially in terms …

Modular Joystick Design For Virtual Reality Surgical Skills Training, Michael Head

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A modular control interface and simulated virtual reality environment was designed and created in order to determine how the kinematic architecture of a control interface affects minimally invasive surgery. A user is able to selectively determine how many, the type, and location of degrees of freedom they require for the specific surgical simulation through the use of modular joints and constraint components. Furthermore, passive locking was designed and implemented through the use of inflated latex tubing around rotational degree of freedom joints. It is believed these features will have the ability to effectively simulate a variety of surgical simulations and …

Six Degree Of Freedom Miniature In Vivo Robot For Laparoendoscopic Single-Site Surgery, Ryan L. Mccormick

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The shift in surgery from open procedures to minimally invasive surgery (MIS) techniques have provided benefits of decreased recovery time, improved cosmetic results, and reduced costs. As advances in MIS move to minimize the number of external incisions, such as with Laparoendoscopic Single-Site (LESS) surgery, additional complexities are introduced. These complexities, including unintuitive controls, reduced dexterity, and limited workspace, hinder these methods from more widespread implementation in more complicated surgical procedures.

Through the use of a miniature in vivo robotic surgical platform designed for LESS surgery, these complexities can be mitigated, allowing for wider adoption of MIS by placing the …