SURGICAL TOOLBOX

Technical skills involved in this project

Programming: Python

Mechanical: SolidWorks, Fusion360, 3D Printing

Electrical: Soldering, multimeter

Sensors and Components: motor driver, servo motor, Raspberry pi 4 & zero

Software: ROS 2 nodes, Numpy, Matrix transformations. openCV (Hough edge and circle)

Soft Skills: Communication, presentation

PROJECT SUMMARY

This is my first research experience that I worked with MEDCVR lab at University of Toronto. The goal of this project is to develop a cost effective solution to operate retired DaVinci Surgical tools to integrate with Franka robots. Traditionally, DaVinci Surgical robot costs over 1 millions dollars. A new research platform that can teleoperate the surgical tools is in demand. In this project, I developed a surgical toolbox that can individually command roll, pitch, yaw and grip motions of the tools. The surgical toolbox is controlled by raspberry pi 4 (or Zero) with 4 servo motors and motor control board. I have also designed a vibration damper (canulla) to improve tool operation accuracy with the franka robotic arm.

Lastly, system still have some inaccuracy due to the inherent mechanical design of the tool (string tension based). I also worked on a calibration procedure that utilize openCV’s hough circle and hough edge to make 4 independent operations more accurate.

RESULT PHOTOS