Evaluation of a combined grip of pinch and power grips in manipulating a master manipulator

Abstract

In conventional robotic surgery, the manipulating methods exhibit limitations that are strongly related to the advantages and disadvantages of a pinch grip and power grip. The context of this study is focused on the introduction of a combined grip to compensate for such restraints. In particular, this study proposed the combined-grip-handle scheme on a master manipulator. In this framework, the position of fingertips was designed to be adjustable in distance and direction to allow for a pinch grip motion around the holding axis of a power grip motion. A ring-bar experiment applying the master-slave scheme was conducted with the master manipulator under several manipulating conditions of the combined grip and the conventional gripping types. Results for using the combined grip demonstrated that the combined grip showed better performance on the positioning operation, compared with the conventional gripping types.