Study on the Position and Posture Control of a Small Sized Venipuncture Robot for Blood Collection Assistance

In order to reduce errors in blood sampling, blood sampling assistance systems that enable accurate venipuncture have been developed. However, previous prototype systems were large and could be intimidating to patients. The purpose of this study is to develop a beetle-sized (40 × 40 × 40 mm) puncture robot that can be put on the arm. We focused on mosquitoes sucking blood with their small bodies, and aim to reduce the size of the robot by introducing a parallel link mechanism that mimics the body structure of a mosquito. However, the motor to operate the joints satisfactorily tends to be large. To solve this problem, linear actuators were partially applied. The kinematics of a 4-DOF parallel link with rotary and linear joints was constructed, and its kinematics and dynamics were simulated. Then, motors were selected based on the simulation results, and the actual robot was built. The motion of the robot was evaluated by motor control based on inverse kinematics, and it was confirmed that the robot was able to implement positional movement in the X, Y, and Z axes.