Development of Pneumatically Driven Forceps Manipulator with Force Display

Abstract

In this paper, a pneumatically driven forceps manipulator which is suitable for suturing task is developed. The manipulator has a wire drive rotating joint at the tip part and enables precise gripper rotation into practice. The gripper mechanism which consists of a small cylinder and slider-crank mechanism is proposed and implemented at the tip part. The gripper is driven by air pressure supplied through a fine tube so that the interference of other joints can be avoided. The gripping force of 20[N] is achieved. We constructed a master-slave system with the forceps manipulator and conducted some suturing experiments using a sponge object. It became clear that the forceps manipulator had good maneuverability and could estimate the external moment within the uncertainty of 10[mNm].