Preliminary development of a skull-mounted lightweight parallel robot toward minimally invasive neurosurgery

Robotic systems play an increasingly important role in improving feasibility and effectiveness of minimally invasive neurosurgery (MIN). However, bulky or complex mechanisms limit the application of existing solutions. This paper proposes a novel robot system for MIN serving as a mechanical guidance for needles, catheters, or probes. A parallel mechanism with 4 DOFs is adopted, with the aim of providing sufficient accuracy and load capacity. The volume and the weight of the robot are only 50 mm×50 mm×40 mm and 64 g. The features of the small volume and lightweight make it possible for the robot to be mounted on the skull for the convenience of the surgeon's operation. In this paper, the mechanical design, kinematics and workspace are described in detail. Two preliminary experiments are conducted, and results are obtained to verify the load capacity and the trajectory tracking performance of the prototype.