08-09-2017, 09:28 AM
The basis of surgical robotics lies in the development of the robotic arm. This is an exhaustive review of the literature on the nature and development of this device with an emphasis on surgical applications. We have reviewed the literature published and classified the robotic arms by their application: demonstration, industrial application, medical application, etc. There is a definite trend in the manufacture of robotic arms towards more dextrous devices, more degrees of freedom, and capabilities beyond the human arm. da Vinci designed the first sophisticated robotic arm in 1495 with four degrees of freedom and an onboard analog controller that supplies power and programming. The left arm of von Kemplen's automaton was quite sophisticated. Unimate introduced the first industrial robotic arm in 1961, later becoming the PUMA arm. In 1963 the ranch arm was designed; Minsky's Tentacle arm appeared in 1968, Scheinman's Stanford arm in 1969 and MIT's Silver arm in 1974. Aird became the first cyborg human with a robotic arm in 1993. In 2000 Miguel Nicolalis redefined the man's potential -machine in his work on brain implants in monkey owls directly interfacing with robotic arms both locally and remotely. The robotic arm is the ultimate effector of robotic systems and is currently the hallmark of the Vinci surgical system that makes its entry into the surgical application. But, despite the potential advantages of this computer-controlled master-slave system, robotic arms have definite limitations. The work in progress in robotics has many potential solutions to the drawbacks of current robotic surgical systems.