One Thousand Four Hundred and Nineteen

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Speaking of this, we have to say, the original design concept of this surgical robot.

In fact, at the beginning of the birth of surgical robots, they were not aimed at ordinary people.

His original design concept was actually to serve the war.

As early as the late 1980s, a group of experts in the United States began to study surgical robots at the Stanford Research Institute with an official background.

However, it was the Department of Defense of the United States that initially supported the development of this project, and their ultimate goal was to let these scientists develop a robot that could be operated by soldiers on the battlefield.

Their requirement for this robot is that it is easy to operate and easy to carry.

Even if possible, doctors can be operated remotely to help soldiers on the battlefield complete operations, so as to achieve the purpose of treating soldiers.

After all, in an environment like the front line, it is not so easy for doctors to work quietly and save lives.

This idea is very whimsical and bold, and it was possible to think of such a plan in the 1980s.

You have to admire the great brains of the Americans. Of course, this may also have something to do with the Star Wars program they dominated in the country at that time.

At that time, this project received a lot of special funds from the US Department of Defense.

It's a pity that in 1990, because of the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, the Star Wars program was terminated.

At this time, the US Department of Defense also had to reduce expenditures, so after the 1990s, this project rarely received funds from the military.

However, through their relationship, the military soon contacted the National Institutes of Health of the United States. This institution will continue to inject funds into this project and carry out research.

Because of the strong financial support and the countless scientific elites in the United States, this project made progress very quickly.

But one of the scientists involved in the project at the time, Frederick. Dr. Moore is very interested in this project, and he has applied to the project team many times.

It is required that the first-generation product of this project be taken out for civilian use, so that the purpose of maximum commercialization can be achieved.

Unfortunately, before

It was never approved.

Knowing that in 1994, he purchased all the intellectual property rights of the first-generation robot at his own expense, and established Intuitive Surgery in 1995, and then packaged and launched this first-generation product in 1996.

The people of the United States actually created such a robot more than 20 years ago, which shows the terrible technical background and strength of the United States.

Moreover, people are still constantly updating and iterating on the original basis and conducting in-depth research.

For example, in 2006, they launched the second-generation product, and in 2009 they launched the third-generation product, and in 2014, the fourth-generation product came out.

A few years ago, the fifth-generation products of Intuitive Sense Company had already been sold all over the world...

When scientists in the United States designed this robot, the main consideration was to use it in harsh environments such as battlefields, so the requirements for mechanical arms were higher than those for industrial robots.

So they thought of many ways.

For example, the whole device is divided into three parts, one part is the doctor's console, the robotic arm system, and the imaging system.

Doctor console, as the name suggests, is a platform for doctors to operate equipment.

The robotic arm system is the key component for performing operations on patients.

It is the same as the processing equipment of industrial robots, but industrial robots use servo motors to control the mechanical arms.

The control system on the surgical robot is another matter.

In this system, there are a total of four robotic arms, the middle one is called the mirror arm, as the name suggests is to support and hold the camera, and the other three are called mechanical arms, which are also operating arms.

At the beginning of the operation, the doctor first needs to insert the mirror arm into the patient's operation area through the console to expose the operation field.

At the same time, it is operating another robotic arm to penetrate deep into the patient's body to complete the operation.

The entry angle and depth of the robotic arm are all set, and once it enters the operation area, it will be locked and fixed.

At this time, to complete the operation, it is necessary to rely on the mechanical wrist joint at the front end of the mechanical arm, as well as the clamps or knives.

Relying on these small tools, doctors can complete a series of surgical operations such as dissociation, cutting, suturing, clamping, and electrocoagulation in the patient's operating area.

Moreover, the mechanical wrist and the front-end fixture are very flexible, with up to 7 degrees of freedom, which is more flexible than a human wrist.

Therefore, this set of equipment can perform very delicate movements in a very small space.

Last year, Da Vinci made an advertisement. The doctor operated two robotic arms, inserted them through the narrow opening of a wine bottle, and performed surgery on a grape inside the bottle.

Not exaggerating at all, they cut open the belly of the grapes, and then sewed the grapes together.

The entire operation process can be seen online.

But such a level of dexterity and sophistication really cannot be accomplished by human hands.

Therefore, although the price of using surgical robots to complete operations is very expensive, in fact, this kind of equipment really means the future of surgery.

And because there are many robotic arms on the surgical robot, and the control of such robotic arms requires great precision and extra flexibility.

In this way, it is impossible to use rolling four-cylinder bearings to control.

In order to solve this problem, the original designers proposed to install as many motors on the equipment as possible.

For example, motors are installed at the joints of each robotic arm.

Then at the end of the mechanical arm, install the clutch of the rotatable joint, and install the micromechanical joint at the back, and four control wheels.

Then use the motor to release, or pull the steel wire closer, to drive the control wheel, so as to control the micro-mechanical joint, and finally to control the clutch to control the knife and fixture at the end of the mechanical arm to complete the surgical action.

Speaking of it, the working principle is actually very complicated.

When Huang Haibin learned about the working principle of the entire surgical robot, he was also stunned by the wide-open imagination of the Americans.

Previously, he thought that ball screw bearings were really needed to control the robotic arm.

At that time, he was wondering how the Americans controlled so many mechanical arms through bearings.

It wasn't until later that he learned that they didn't use bearings at all, but used other mechanical methods.

Since then, he has been deeply impressed by the technological creativity of the Americans.

But it is also because the robot does not use ball screw bearings, which greatly reduces the difficulty of self-installing the robot.

If this robot is going to use ball screw bearings to control the mechanical arm, it will have to kill him.

You must know that the high-precision ball screw bearings need to be imported from abroad.

And once people think that you import this thing and use it in some places that shouldn't be used, they won't sell it to you.

Even if you pay a higher price!

Moreover, the bearings used in industrial machine tools and robots have very high precision requirements, and the highest ones are even accurate to a few microns.

Therefore, the price is also very expensive. If Huang Haibin really wants to buy it, even if they are willing to sell it to him, he still can't afford too much, because it is too expensive.

For surgical robots, as long as the accuracy of millimeter level is enough.

For example, the doctor operates the joystick and moves 5 millimeters, but the end of the robotic arm actually moves only 1 millimeter in the patient's body.

Therefore, although the driving device used on this set of robotic arms is not as accurate as the industrial ball screw bearings.

But in terms of cost, it is much lower than industrial bearings.

We must know that the ball screw bearings used in industrial machine tools are so expensive, and there is another reason, that is, the durability must be high.

You have to consider the working environment of industrial machine tools, such as the current five-axis linkage machine tool when processing workpieces.

The workers put a large iron tuo directly on the fixture, and let the machine tool constantly change the tool to cut and mill on the iron tuo.

In this process, not only the iron lump will be stressed, but the iron lump will also have reaction force fed back to the tool while the iron lump is being repaired.

According to the normal physical phenomenon, the knife should have bounced off at this time.

However, in the machine tool processing video we saw, what we saw was the tool held by the robotic arm, which was always attached to the processing part of the workpiece and was constantly cutting and milling.

The reason for this is that the computing system of the machine tool will continuously adjust the data according to the shape change of the iron lump, and output instructions to the motor to adjust the output power of the motor.

And the final execution of this task falls on the ball screw bearing. He has to constantly control the depth of the tool to adjust the angle of processing to ensure accuracy.

So this is the most powerful part of the ball screw bearing, and it is also the reason why it is expensive.

Fortunately, there is no need to use such expensive accessories on surgical robots.

But although the motor, and the robotic arm control system can be solved.

Then the next step is the imaging system, which is also very difficult.

Because surgical robots all use three-dimensional cameras, this kind of thing is specially made just like the three-dimensional cameras used to shoot IMAX.

And in this field, it can be said that Americans have always ruled the roost!

Even if the industrial technology of Germany and Japan is superior, but in this cutting-edge technology field, the best is to lose to the United States.

For example, the camera lens used by Da Vinci was specially designed and customized by Hopkins University.

This kind of lens can magnify the operation area by 10-15 times, which has completely broken through the limit of human naked eyes, which greatly improves the success rate of doctors' operations.