A Novel End Effector for Telemanipulated Suturing in Robot-Assisted Laparoscopy

Kurzfassung

Suturing is an integral part of surgery. Spe-cialized instrumentation facilitates manual needle handlingto support laparoscopic suturing tasks, e.g. uterine closure,in minimally invasive surgery. Current solutions for robot-assisted laparoscopy lack the possibility to integrate these in-struments, making them suitable only for conventional laparo-scopic surgery. This paper introduces a novel end effector de-sign actuating a conventional suturing instrument. The end ef-fector is integrated into the DLR MiroSurge system to facil-itate telemanipulated suturing. The mechanical properties ofthe end effector are characterized and its feasibility for use inrobot-assisted laparoscopy is demonstrated.