Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has transformed modern surgical operations by reducing pain, trauma, scarring and recovery time for the patient. However, precision, stability and accuracy continue to limit surgical performance. Robots can exhibit better precision and stability than humans and have the potential to improve MIS results. This work presents the design and development of a patented 3R1T parallel robot for MIS. The mechanism incorporates a coaxial spherical parallel architecture enabling three rotational degrees of freedom, combined with a remotely actuated translational fourth degree of freedom, therefore reducing the weight of the moving structure, decreasing inertial forces and increasing the system accuracy. The kinematic design is analyzed to achieve the required workspace, motor torque requirements are calculated, and a control system with integrated inverse kinematics is developed. A prototype was manufactured, and preliminary experiments were conducted to evaluate the orientation repeatability of the robot. Results demonstrated a repeatability of ±22.86 μm, commensurate with typical MIS constraints. This suggests that the proposed robot offers potential improvements in precision and control for minimally invasive surgical procedures, over traditional manual methods.
McAleenan et al. (2026) studied this question.