A Novel Single-Arm Stapling Robot for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery - Design and Verification

Because of the limited space, the suture of the oral and maxillofacial surgery is a challenging task, which requires oral surgeons to master excellent techniques. This letter presents a single-arm stapling robot for oral and maxillofacial surgery using magnesium alloy staples, as well the stapling strategy of the robot, which can complete the stapling operation. The robot has six degrees of freedom to adjust position and orientation, and a novel stapler with one degree of freedom at the end of the robot. A special stapling strategy is proposed to reapproximate the wound, which is featured using the staple with two different length legs. This letter introduces the mechanism of the robot. Moreover, the kinematics control of the robot is presented. The stapling experiments have been conducted on an oral and maxillofacial model with the wounds of three different widths and different directions. The results demonstrate that the robot can staple the wounds with reasonable accuracy.