Surgical Robots: The Da Vinci System

The surgeon sits at a console, looking into a 3D viewfinder. Across the room, a 4-armed robot looms over the patient. The surgeon moves their hands. The robot moves its tiny pincers inside the patient. This is The Da Vinci System. It is not autonomous (yet). It is Teleoperated.

Superhuman Powers

The robot gives the doctor abilities they don’t have biologically:

1. Tremor Filtration: Biology is shaky. Your hands vibrate.
   • The robot software detects high-frequency jitters (tremors) and filters them out. The robot arm is perfectly steady.
2. Motion Scaling:
   • The doctor moves their hand 10 cm.
   • The robot moves 1 cm.
   • This allows for microscopic suturing that human fingers are too clumsy to perform.

Wrist Articulation (EndoWrist)

Traditional laparoscopic tools are straight sticks. The Da Vinci tools have tiny cable-driven wrists at the tip. They have 7 Degrees of Freedom (DoF), just like a human hand, but smaller than a dime.

FTC Connection

This is exactly what we do in TeleOp (Driver Control Period).

• Slow Mode: We hold a button to reduce our robot speed to 30%.
• PID Holding: We let go of the joystick, and the robot holds the arm steady against gravity. We are essentially building giant, low-budget surgical robots to perform surgery on the game field.