Spherical assistant for stereotactic surgery

This contribution reports the development of a novel robotic manipulator for stereotactic surgery on small animals, the spherical assistant for stereotactic surgery (SAS- SU). A kinematic design is deduced based on the surgical task requirements. Forward and inverse kinematics are derived analytically. As the system is required to position medical probes of varying size and shape, details on the calibration for different probe configurations are provided. The kinematic design of the novel manipulator is compared to an existing stereotactic instrument in terms of kinematic accuracy. Results show that the SASSU systems is less sensitive to translational positioning errors induced by changes in the joint variables.