SnakeRaven: Teleoperation of a 3D Printed Snake-like Manipulator Integrated to the RAVEN II Surgical Robot

Telerobotic systems combined with miniaturised snake-like or elephant-trunk robotic arms can improve the ergonomics and accessibility in minimally invasive surgical tasks such as knee arthroscopy. Such systems, however, are usually designed in a specific and integral approach, making it expensive to adapt to various procedures or patient anatomies. 3D printed instruments with a detachable design can bring the benefits of patient-specific customisation, affordability, and adaptability to new clinical scenarios. However, the integration of such snake-like instruments to standard telerobotic systems can be challenging in terms of design and control. In this study, a teleoperation system is developed to control and steer the pose of SnakeRaven: a 3D printed, customisable snake-like end-effector attached to the RAVEN II platform for the application of fibre-optic knee arthroscopy. Algorithms for the parametric inverse kinematics and mapping between the RAVEN II joint space to the coupled tendon-driven rolling joints are developed. The controller is tested and validated on the physical prototype interfacing with the RAVEN II platform in a teleoperation experiment. A video demonstrating the main results of this paper can be found via https://youtu.be/ApJjR853kIQ