Medical manipulators for surgical applications

Great advances have been made over the last decade with respect to medical manipulators for surgical robots. Although they cannot replace surgeons, they can increase surgeons' abilities to perform surgeries with greater therapeutic effectiveness. These advanced surgical tools have been implemented in complex, precise, repetitive, and difficult surgeries. This chapter reviews medical manipulators used in surgical applications. At present, several kinds of medical manipulators have been developed to perform a variety of surgical procedures and can be classified into different categories. Here, the authors discuss general design principles and summarize and classify medical manipulators based on joint category and level of autonomy, with illustrations of applications. Finally, a brief synopsis is provided.