Scrub Nurse Robot for Laparoscopic Surgery

During laparoscopic surgeries, changing forceps is a relatively simple procedure that requires a nurse or another surgeon; however, most hospitals lack a scrub nurse in the operating room. Therefore, we have developed an assisting robot for laparoscopic surgery that is able to pass or receive forceps under the voice control of the surgeon. This robot system consists of a magazine that holds all forceps to be used in one operation and a robot arm that passes or receives forceps between the magazine and surgeon. These two components are located side by side and have a linear actuator for height adjustment. A bar code is attached to the forceps to identify the forceps. This system utilizes speech recognition software and can select the forceps requested by the surgeon. After the robot hand grasps the forceps from the magazine, the arm and the wrist turn to hand the forceps to the surgeon. When the surgeon lays the used forceps on the return holder, the robot returns the forceps to the magazine in a similar motion as when passing the forceps to the surgeon. This robot can, thus, compensate for the shortage of scrub nurses required for surgery. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden and The Robotics Society of Japan, 2008