Background: Traditional commercial master devices and specialied serial master devices meet insufficient workspace, low intuitiveness, low stiffness, and poor accuracy during master-slave mapping for robot-assisted flexible ureteroscopy (FURS).
Methods: This paper presents a 3-DoF master device for FURS. A 2-DoF parallel mechanism was designed and utilised in the master device for higher stiffness based on requirements analysis. A Back Propagation Neural Network was built for the forward kinematics of the parallel mechanism during master-slave mapping. Analysis of mechanical characteristics was carried out for the usability of the master device. A contrast experiment on the phantom was conducted to evaluate the performance between the proposed master device and a previous one.
Results: The completion time for each trial of the proposed master devices is shorter than that of the previous master serial device. Meanwhile, the proposed device provides a more comfortable operating style than the previous one.
Conclusions: The proposed 3-DoF configuration for the master device is with more intuitive performance. A better comfort level indicates its usability in clinical applications.
Keywords: flexible ureteroscopy; master devices; medical robotics; parallel mechanism.
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.