Effects of Grasp Frequency on the Dynamics of a Robotic Surgical Grasper¹

Endoscopic surgical instruments such as the da Vinci EndoWrist^® are the interface between surgeon and patient in the burgeoning field of robotic surgery. In the current clinical setting, such tools are being used primarily as an extension of the surgeon's hands. However, more robust features such as online tissue identification may be integrated into the functionality of robotic surgical graspers in the future. For these applications, the tool dynamics should be well understood and modeled across a spectrum of frequencies. The linear model used to characterize the tool is a version proposed by Sie and Kowalewski [1] and is shown in Eq. (1). Refer to Ref. [1] for definition of model parameters