Background: In robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery, the surgeon controls a robot by operating a pair of master manipulators. Thus, the performance of a master manipulator directly affects the work of the surgeon physiologically and psychologically.
Aims: In order to improve the operability and quality of operation, a structure optimisation method of master manipulator is proposed.
Materials & methods: The optimisation index of workspace and dexterity of main manipulator based on ergonomics and kinematics is established, and the reasonable weight coefficient of optimisation index is determined by using combination weighting method.
Results: Experiments verified that the proposed optimisation method ensures a large workspace and good kinematic performance for the master manipulator.
Conclusion: This improves the comfort of the surgeon and can effectively avoid the problem of cutting off master-slave communication to adjust the position of the master manipulator owing to the small workspace.
Keywords: dexterity; ergonomics; master manipulator; robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery; structural optimisation.
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.