Development of a Novel Continuum Robotic System for Maxillary Sinus Surgery

Lesions in the maxillary sinus area are usually treated with endoscopic interventional surgery. However, target lesions are often hardly accessible with conventional surgical tools. A new continuum module is proposed with a bending manipulator to perform maxillary sinus surgery. The developed manipulator has a NiTiNol tube embedded in its continuum module. It has a diameter of 4 mm and can be bent up to 270° to reach the target position flexibly. In this paper, a kinematic model of the continuum module is presented. An external loading analysis of the robot was formulated to analyze payload capacity and tensions, by taking into account friction, actuation, elastic effects, and external loadings. Some experiments were carried out to validate the kinematics and to test the robot capabilities of scissoring, payload, and manipulation.