Design Analysis of an Innovative Parallel Robot for Minimally Invasive Pancreatic Surgery

This paper focuses on the design of a parallel robot designed for robotic assisted minimally invasive pancreatic surgery. T wo alternative architectures, called ATHENA - 1 and ATHENA - 2, each with 4 degrees of freedom (DOF) are proposed. T heir kinematic schemes are presented, and the conceptual 3D CAD models are illustrated. Based on these, two F inite E lement M ethod (FEM) simulations were performed to determine which architecture has the higher stiffness. A workspace quantitative analysis is performed to further assess the usability of the two proposed parallel architectures related to the medical tasks . The obtained results are used to select the architecture which fit the required design criteria and will be used to develop the experimental model of the surgical robot.