Special Issue Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

1–11
Ó The Author(s) 2015
Dimensional optimization of a DOI: 10.1177/1687814014568541
aime.sagepub.com
minimally invasive surgical robot
system based on NSGA-II algorithm

Wei Wang, Weidong Wang, Wei Dong, Hongjian Yu, Zhiyuan Yan
and Zhijiang Du

Abstract
Based on the proposed end-effector structure of a laparoscopic minimally invasive surgical manipulator, a dimensional
optimization method is investigated to enlarge the motion range of the mechanical arm in the specific target area and
reduce the collision among the mechanical arms simultaneously. Both the length of the kinematics links and the overall
size of the integrated system are considered in the optimization process. The NSGA-II algorithm oriented to the multi-
objective optimization is utilized to calculate the Pareto solution set of the objective function. Finally, the dependence of
the evaluation indexes is analysed to filter the non-inferior set, which guarantees the selection of the optimization
solution.

Keywords
NSGA-II, minimally invasive surgical robot system, dimensional optimization

Date received: 25 September 2014; accepted: 19 December 2014

Academic Editor: Chun-Liang Yeh

Introduction hand–eye coordination, poor flexibility, easy fatigue

Since Dr Mouret performed the world’s first laparo-
scopic cholecystectomy in Lyon, France, in 1987, the
operative surgery has stepped into the minimally inva-
sive surgery era.1 Generally, in an open surgery, a large
incision is needed to expose the focus area completely.
A minimally invasive surgery differs from the open sur-
gery, which only uses several small incisions with a dia-
meter of 5–12 mm on the human body as the
laparoscope or the surgical instrument channel.
Compared with the open surgery, the minimally inva-
sive surgery can reduce the probability of infection and
complications and features many advantages such as
small surgical trauma, shorten recover time, and less
pain and blood loss.2 Moreover, the robot technology
is introduced to the minimally invasive surgery, which
is beneficial to overcome the disadvantages of tradi-
tional minimally invasive surgery, for example, bad
and magnified hand tremble.3,4 The robotic minimally
invasive surgical system is considered as another mile-
stone in the operative surgery history.5
Since the minimally invasive surgical robot shows
significant clinical value and huge potential economic
benefits, the robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery
technique has become a hot research issue in the
robotics field.6 The minimally invasive surgical robots
developed by many research institutions have achieved
State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of
Technology, Harbin, China
Corresponding author:
Zhijiang Du, State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin
Institute of Technology, 2 Yikuang Street, Harbin 150080, China.
Email: duzj01@hit.edu.cn

Creative Commons CC-BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
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2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 1. Minimally invasive surgery manipulator.
great success, such as the ZEUS and the Da Vinci mini-
mally invasive surgery systems approved by US Food
and Drug Administration (FDA),7,8 RAVEN series
surgical robot system developed by University of
Washington9–11 and MiroSurge minimally invasive sur-
gery robotic system developed by DLR.12
The robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery
requires the mechanical arms to realize the coordinated
operations such as suturing, knotting and tissue separ-
ating in the human body’s closed space. On the other
hand, the system is also required to minimize the colli-
sions among the mechanical arms and the interference
with other surgical equipment. That is, a large colla-
borative workspace in the human body and a small
interference space outside the human body are two
fundamental requirements for a minimally invasive sur-
gical system. Therefore, in order to perform a high-
quality minimally invasive surgery, it is very necessary
to optimize the structure parameters of the mechanical
arm to satisfy the requirements mentioned above.
Oriented to the actual laparoscopic minimally invasive
surgery, this article proposes a systematic design of the
minimally invasive surgical manipulator, in which three
independent mechanical arms are arranged in the form
of parallel configuration on the same mobile base. This
design scheme can enhance the overall flexibility of the
system, and it is also helpful to determine the relative
position between the manipulators. However, it will
also lead to the interference among the mechanical
arms. In order to reduce the probability of the collision,
this article proposes a NSGA-II-based methodology
for the mechanical arms’ optimization. Two perfor-
mance indexes, that is, the average collision-free inverse
solution (NCS) and the target area reachable rate
(TAR), are utilized in the multi-objective optimization.
Based on the actual conditions, the Pareto solution set
is analysed and ranked to determine the optimal struc-
tural parameters of the minimally invasive surgical
robot.
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Design of the minimally invasive surgical
manipulator
As shown in Figure 1, the minimally invasive surgical
manipulator consists of one laparoscope arm and two
instrument arms. The three arms are arranged in form
of parallel configuration on the same mobile base.
Each mechanical arm contains three parts, that is, the
preoperative positioning mechanism, the remote centre
of motion (RCM) kinematic mechanism and the end-
effectors. The preoperative positioning mechanism
enables to adjust the spatial position of the minimally
invasive surgical manipulator via four rotational joints
and one prismatic joint, which determines the initial
position and orientation of the mechanical arms.
During the operation, those joints must be locked, and
the end-effectors are driven by the RCM kinematic
mechanism to perform the operation.
During the surgical procedure, the additional non-
surgical damage on the surgical incisions is intolerable.
Therefore, the kinematic mechanism with a fixed spatial
pivot point should be proposed, which is free from the
control of physical hinges. The concept, that is, the RCM
mechanism, was first proposed by Taylor in 1995.13 The
compound parallelogram mechanism is the most com-
mon RCM mechanism for the minimally invasive surgi-
cal robot design, whose principle is shown in Figure 2.
Lever 4 does not exist in the actual structure, and levers
1, 2 and 3 can rotate around the RCM point via the geo-
metrical constraints among the parallelograms A, B and
C. Meanwhile, the plane mechanism is driven by a rotat-
ing joint whose axis also passes through the RCM point.
The compound parallelogram mechanism can guarantee
that the movement of the instruments will not cause seri-
ous additional damage on the patient incision.
Since the three mechanical arms are identical in
structure, the left mechanical arm is discussed as an
example to establish the kinematic model. The D-H
coordinate system is shown in Figure 3.
Wang et al. 3

Figure 2. The compound parallelogram mechanism for RCM.

Based on Table 1, the transformation matrix of the

mechanical arm in the joint space and the homogeneous
transformation matrix in the base coordinate system
can be obtained, respectively
2 3 2 3
1 0 0 0 c2 s2 0 0
6 7 6 7
60 1 0 07 6s c2 0 07
0
T1 = 6 7 T2 = 6 2 7
60 0 1 7
d1 5 60 0 1 07
4 4 5
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
2 3 2 3
c3 s3 0 a2 c4 s4 0 a3
6 7 6 7
6 s3 c3 0 0 73 6 0 0 1 07
2
T3 = 6
60
7 T4 = 6
7 6 s
7
4 0 1 05 4 4 c4 0 07
5
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
2 3
s5 c5 0 a4
6 7
6 0 0 1 d5 7
4
T5 = 6
6 c
7
4 5 s5 0 07 5
0 0 0 1 Figure 3. D-H coordinate system of the manipulator.
2 3
1 0 0 0
6 7
60 sa ca ca d60 7
5
T =6
6060
7 Table 1. D-H parameters of the manipulator.
4 ca sa sa d60 7
5
Joint i ai1 (mm) ai1 (°) di (mm) qi (°)
0 0 0 1
2 3 1 0 0 d1 0
s6 c6 0 0
2 0 0 0 u2
6 7
6 c6 sa s6 sa ca ca d6 7 3 a2 0 0 u3
5
T6 = 6
6c c
7 4 a3 290 0 u4
4 6 a s6 ca sa sa d6 7
5 5 a4 90 2d5 290 + u5
6 0 290 2 a d6 290 + u6
0 0 0 1
2 3 2 3 7 0 290 0 290 + u7
s7 c7 0 0 1 0 0 0 8 0 90 d8 0
6 7 6 7
60 0 1 07 60 0 1 d8 7
6
T7 = 6
6c
7 7
T8 = 6 7
4 7 s7 0 07
5
60
4 1 0 0 75 Optimization of the minimally invasive
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 surgery manipulator
0
T8 = 0 T1 1 T2 2 T3 3 T4 4 T5 5 T6 6 T7 7 T8 The dexterity stands for the kinematics performance of
ð1Þ the mechanical arm at a given pose position and orien-
tation. Since the concept of dexterity was first intro-
where sa = sin a, ca = cos a, si = sin ui and duced by Yoshikawa to the field of robotics in 1982,
ci = cos ui (i = 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). the dexterity index and many of its variations have been

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4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
widely used in the evaluation and the optimization of
mechanical arms.14–19 The manipulator designed in this
article is composed of the preoperative positioning
mechanism and the RCM mechanism. During the oper-
ation procedure, the joints of the preoperative position-
ing mechanism are locked, which will not be involved
in the surgical operation. In addition, the dexterity of
RCM mechanism is related only to the angle of the
joints. Therefore, it is not significant to use the dexter-
ity index of the mechanical arm as the global optimiza-
tion goal.
As mentioned above, the integrated mechanical
arms may result in collision. Therefore, for the dimen-
sional optimization of the manipulator, the motion
coordination among the mechanical arms should be
considered as the main factor so that the system can
reduce the possibility of collision and make the initial
arm posture establishment become easy. The RCM
kinematic mechanism and the preoperative positioning
mechanism determine the position and orientation of
the end-effector. The position of RCM point is com-
pletely determined by the preoperative positioning
mechanism. Therefore, to satisfy the requirements of
the minimally invasive surgery, the motion range of the
RCM point should cover the operation area at least.
How the RCM’s reachable range covers the target area
can be used as the optimization index for the preopera-
tive positioning mechanism.
Based on the previous analysis, this article will
employ the following two factors as the major optimiza-
tion objectives, that is, to maximize the coverage of
RCM’s point in the target surgery area and to minimize
the collision among the mechanical arms. The target
operation area is simplified to a virtual surface with
equal interval sampling points. The sampling point that
satisfies the operation requirements will be selected as
(a)
10 cm
30 cm
40 cm
Z
Head
Foot
Figure 4. The surgical model and distribution of the sampling points.
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the potential RCM’s point. Based on that selection, the
joint variables of the kinematics chain will be solved via
the inverse kinematics model. If the value of the each
joint variable is within the respective motion range, the
selected RCM’s point is located in the target operation
area. Then, the coverage range of the RCM’s point
selected within the target area can be obtained.
Moreover, by using the solved joint variable values, the
spatial configuration of each mechanical arm can be
determined based on the forward kinematics model.
Finally, through the information above, the spatial geo-
metric methodology can be utilized to estimate the inter-
ference among arms; based on that, an evaluation index
will be proposed to assess the system mechanical design.
The target operation area model and the
optimization index TAR
In this article, the target area of the abdominal mini-
mally invasive surgery is modelled as a part of a cylin-
der, which covers a curved surface of
30 cm 3 40 cm 3 10 cm (the light green area as shown in
Figure 4). That surface is hypothesized as the patient’s
abdominal wall, which is meshed by a fixed-length dis-
tance. Each node on the meshed surface is a single
RCM’s point, through which the laparoscope or the
instrument will be inserted into the human body. The
incision diameter is 10 or 12 mm, which depends on the
laparoscope or the instrument used in the surgery.
Smaller sampling interval will not improve the optimi-
zation results but makes the calculation process more
complicated. In addition, the coverage of the operation
target area of the laparoscope arm is different from the
instrument arms’ due to the function differences.
Figure 4 shows the sampling points of the instrument
arm and the laparoscope arm, respectively.
(b) Sampling points distribution
Sampling points of the instrument arm
Sampling points of the laparoscope arm
1.2
1.15
1.1
1.1
1
1.05
0.9
0.2 0.8
0.1
0 X
−0.1 0.7
−0.2
Y
Wang et al. 5

Table 2. Motion range of the kinematics joints.

Manipulator d1 (m) u2 (°) u3 (°) u4 (°) u5 (°)

Laparoscope arm 1.5 to 2.0 290 to 90 2150 to 150 215 to 15 290 to 90

Left instrument arm 1.5 to 2.0 0 to 90 2150 to 0 215 to 15 290 to 90
Right instrument arm 1.5 to 2.0 290 to 0 0 to 150 215 to 15 290 to 90

To estimate whether the RCM’s point is located on
the target operation area, one sampling point will be
hypothesized as the potential RCM’s point first, and
then the variable values of all joints in the preoperative
positioning mechanism can be obtained via inverse kine-
matics model. If the solved variable values are in the
range of motion (listed in Table 2), the RCM’s point can
be located on the target area to check whether all of the
sampling points will obtain the global information of the
RCM’s points’ coverage on the operation target area.
Since the preoperative positioning mechanism
includes 5 degrees of freedom, the inverse kinematics
model features 2 redundant degrees of freedom for the
position solving, which is a typical redundant inverse
kinematics problem. In this article, a practical strategy
is employed, that is, the redundant degrees of freedom
are fixed so that the unique kinematics solutions can be
solved when the RCM’s point is within the target oper-
ation area. Therefore, two joint variables can be set
with specific values first, and then, the analytical solu-
tions of other joint variables can be solved. Therefore,
several groups of joints’ solution can be obtained when
the motion range of the redundant joints is traversed
with the equal interval step. Here, the variable values
of the first and the second joints are assigned. The
transformation matrix of the mechanical arm TRCM can
be written as follows
0
T1 1 T2 2 T3 3 T4 4 T5 5 T6 = TRCM
Both sides of the equation are multiplied by the
inverse matrices of the first three matrices, and equa-
tion (3) can be obtained
2
T31 1 T21 0 T11 TRCM = 3 T4 4 T5 5 T6
If the elements in the corresponding position
between the both sides are compared, the following
equations can be formulated
8
< xc23 + ys23  a2 c3 = a3 + a4 c4  d5 s4  d6 s4 sa + d6 c4 c5 ca
yc23  xs23 + a2 s3 = d6 s5 ca
:
z  d1 = d5 c4  a4 s4  d6 c4 sa  d6 s4 c5 ca
Assuming q2 and q3 are known, equation (4) can be
solved
8  
>
> yc23  xs23 + a2 s3
>
> u5 = arcsin
>
> d 6 ca
>
< 0 1
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
> B xc23 + ys23  a2 c3  a3 2 C
> u4 = uc  arctan 2@qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi , 6 1  k1 A
>
>
>
>
> ða4 + d6 c5 ca Þ2 + ðd5 + d6 sa Þ2
:
d1 = z + d5 c4 + a4 s4 + d6 c4 sa + d6 c5 ca s4
ð5Þ
xc23 +ys23 a2 c3 a3
where k1 = pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2 2
, uc = arctan2(a4 +
(a4 +d6 c5 ca ) +(d5 +d6 sa )
d6 c5 ca ,d5 +d6 sa ), s23 = sin(u2 +u3 ), c23 = cos(u2 +u3 )
To evaluate a specific sampling point within the tar-
get operation area, the information of the solved joint
variables will be used. If the variables’ value is within
the joint motion range, the RCM’s point of the
mechanical arm is one point of the target operation
area. If the number of reachable sampling points and
the number of total planned sampling points are n and
N, respectively, the ratio of n and N is used as the opti-
mization index of the mechanical arms. Therefore, the
ratio of instrument arm and the laparoscope arm is
defined as TARt and TARe, that is, TARt = nt =Nt 3
100% and TARe = ne =Ne 3 100%.
Selection of sampling point groups and the
interference index NCS
As the typical preoperative implementation steps, three
to five surgical incisions with diameter of 10–12 mm will
be cut on the abdominal wall of the patients to establish
ð2Þ the surgery channel for the instruments or the laparo-
scope. In Figure 5, it can be seen that the first incision
is the access way for the laparoscope, the second and
the third incisions are the surgical instruments’ channels
and the fourth incision is the access way for the auxili-
ary surgical instrument. Minimally invasive incisions
ð3Þ
generally distribute in an isosceles triangle shape, and
the instrument incisions are arranged on both sides of
the laparoscope incision.
Based on the requirements of minimally invasive sur-
gery, different configuration groups of the incisions of
the instruments and the laparoscope can be planned.
Each configuration group includes two sampling points
of instruments and one sampling point of laparoscope.
ð4Þ If the sampling point of the laparoscope arm is assigned
as the origin, a coordinate system can be established as
shown in Figure 6. The incision configuration should
meet the following constraints:

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6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
1. The incisions of instrument should be distribu-
ted on both sides of x-axis and the same side of
y-axis.
Figure 5. The distribution diagram of minimally invasive
surgery (MIS) incisions.
Figure 6. The diagram of sampling points’ group.
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2. The distance L3 between the two instrument
incisions should be smaller than the maximum
distance Ltt max and larger than the minimum
distance Ltt min, that is, Ltt min  L3  Ltt max .
3. The distances L1 and L2 between instrument
incisions and laparoscope incision should be
smaller than the maximum distance Letmax and
larger than the minimum distance Letmin, that is,
Let min  L3  Let max , Let min  L3  Let max .
All the incision configuration groups will be used in
the mechanical arms’ interference analysis. For a cer-
tain configuration of the incision, a group of inverse
kinematics solution for each mechanical arm (including
the instrument arms and the laparoscope arm) will be
obtained. The kinematics joints can be simplified into
several points, whose position can be calculated by the
transformation matrices.
For each sampling point group, according to the
method previously mentioned, the solution set of
inverse kinematics for each mechanical arm can be
obtained. If the motion of the joint angles u2 and u3 in
left and right instruments arms is limited within a spe-
cific range, the spatial position of each joint of the
mechanical arms can be obtained. Therefore, the posi-
tion relationship between the laparoscope arm and the
instrument arms is shown in Figure 7.
Wang et al.
Figure 7. The spatial position of the mechanical arms.
The prismatic joint d1 and the fourth rotary joint u4
will not affect the position relationship between the
links a2 and a4 and the other links in the x–y plane, so
those joints are not shown in Figure 7. As shown in
Figure 7, it can be seen that the interference mainly
occurs under those two configurations, that is, the inter-
ference between the second rotary joint of the laparo-
scope arm and the links a2, a3 and a4 of the instrument
arms, and the interference between the terminal link d60
of the laparoscope arm and the terminal link d60 of the
instrument arms.
Interference between the second rotary joint of laparoscope
arm and the links of instrument arm. In the x–y plane of
the base coordinate system, the position of the second
rotary joint of the laparoscope arm and the position of
the second, third and fifth rotary joints of the instrument
arms can be calculated based on the forward kinematics,
that is, the coordinates of point P: e2(xp, xp), A: t2(xA,
yA), B: t3(xB, yB) and C: t5(xC, yC). The distance between
point P and line AB can be formulated as follows
jA1 x + B1 y + C1 j
dAB = qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi A1 = y B  y A ,
A21 + B21
B1 = x A  x B , C 1 = y A x B  y B x A
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7
As shown in Figure 7, if there is no collision between
the second rotary joint of the laparoscope arm and the
links a2, a3 and a4 of the instrument arms, point P
should be placed at the left side of the directed lines AB
and BC, and the minimum distance between point P
and line segments AB and CD should be larger than
the width of the link wr, that is, the following criteria
should be satisfied
8
< MinfdAB , dBC g.wr
>
A1 xp + B1 yp + C1 \0 ð7Þ
>
:
A2 xp + B2 yp + C2 \0
Interference between the terminal links of the laparoscope arm
and the instrument arms. The distance between the
RCM points of the instrument arm and the laparo-
scope arm is short, so the collision is prone to occur
among the links d60 of the three mechanical arms. To
any specific incision configuration group, the spatial
position relationship between the links d60 of each
arm can be evaluated via the shortest distance of the
line segment. As shown in Figure 7, q1 and q2 are
points on the line CD0 and EF0 , respectively, so the
ð6Þ
equations of line CD0 and EF0 can be formulated as
follows
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

8 8
< xq1 = xC +s1 (xD0  xC ) < xq2 = xE +s2 (xF 0  xE ) distance between the two d60 links of the mechanical
yq1 = yC +s1 (yD0  yC ) , yq2 = yE +s2 (yF 0  yE ) arms
: :
zq1 = zC +s1 (zD0  zC ) zq2 = zE +s2 (zF 0  zE )
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ð8Þ
Del = (xq1  xq2 )2 + (yq1  yq2 )2 + (zq1  zq2 )2 ð13Þ
The distance between points q1 and q2 can be written as
If s1 and s2 do not meet the requirements mentioned
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
above simultaneously, points q1 and q2 are not on the
D1 = (xq1  xq2 )2 + (yq1  yq2 )2 + (zq1  zq2 )2 ð9Þ
line segments of links d60 . Here, the shortest distances
The function can be obtained by substituting equa- between point C and line segment EF0 , point D0 and
tion (8) into equation (9) as follows line segment EF0 , point E and line segment CD0 , and
point F0 and line segment CD0 can be solved, respec-
f (s1 , s2 ) = D21 ð10Þ tively. Among those four distances, the minimum value
can be selected as the minimum distance between the
Therefore, the calculation of the shortest distance two line segments, that is, the formulation below can
between lines CD0 and EF0 can be converted into the be written as
question about the minimum value of function f (s1 , s2 ). n o
Let the partial derivatives of f (s1 , s2 ) with respect to s1 0
Del = Min DEel , DFel , DCel , DD
0
ð14Þ
el
and s2 be 0, that is, the following equation can be
formulated Let the spatial coordinates of point E be
8 pE = ( xE yE zE ), so the plane that passes through
> ∂f (s1 , s2 )
< =0 point E and is perpendicular to line CD can be formu-
∂s1 ð11Þ lated as follows
: ∂f (s1 , s2 ) = 0
>
∂s2 (xD0  xC )(x  xE ) + (yD0  yC )(y  yE )
8 2 2 2 2 ð15Þ
> k12 k15 k11 + k11 k12 k13 + k13 k14 k11 + k13 k11 k12 + (zD0  zC )(z  zE ) = 0
>
< s1 = 3 2 k2
k14 k11 + k11 12
> k k 2
+ k If the intersection point between that plane and the
> 15 11 11 k12 k13
: s2 = 2 + k k2 line CD0 is q3, the coordinate of point q3 can be written
k14 k11 11 12
as follows based on the parameter equation of line CD0
ð12Þ and equation (15)
8
< xq3 = xC +s0 (xD0  xC ) (xC  pEx )(xC  xD ) + (yC  pEy )(yC  yD ) + (zC  pEz )(zC  zD )
yq3 = yC +s0 (yD0  yC ) , s0 = ð16Þ
:
zq3 = zC +s0 (zD0  zC ) (xC  xD )2 + (yC  yD )2 + (zC  zD )2

If 0  s0  1, point q3 is located on the line CD0 , and

k11 = (xD0  xC )2 + (yD0  yC )2 + (zD0  zC )2 ,
k14 = (xF 0  xE )2 + (yF 0  yE )2 + (zF 0  zE )2
k12 = (xD0  xC )(xF 0  xE ) + (yD0  yC )(yF 0  yE )
+ (zD0  zC )(zF 0  zE )
k13 = (xC  xD0 )(xC  xE ) + (yC  yD0 )(yC  yE )
+ (zC  zD0 )(zC  zE )
k15 = (xC  xE )(xF 0  xE ) + (yC  yE )(yF 0  yE )
+ (zC  zE )(zF 0  zE )
When 0  s1  1 and 0  s2  1, point q1 is located
on the line segment of the laparoscope arm’s link d60 ,
that is, the line segment CD0 , and point q2 is located on
the line segment of the left instrument arm’s link d60 ,
that is, the line segment EF0 . Therefore, the
distance between those two points is the shortest
the shortest distance between point E and line segment
CD0 can be calculated as follows
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
DEel = (xq3  pEx )2 + (yq3  pEy )2 + (zq3  pEz )2 ð17Þ
If s0 \0, point q3 is located on the extension line of
D0 C, and the shortest distance between point E and line
segment CD0 is the distance between point E and point
D0 which is formulated as follows
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
DEel = (xD  pEx )2 + (yD  pEy )2 + (zD  pEz )2 ð18Þ
If s0 .1, point q3 is located on the extension line of
CD0 , and the shortest distance between point E and line
segment CD0 is the distance between point E and point
C which is written as follows

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Wang et al. 9

qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
DEel = (xC  pEx )2 + (yC  pEy )2 + (zC  pEz )2 ð19Þ multi-objective optimization problem, in traditional
methodology, the multi-objective functions are gener-
With the same method, the shortest distance Der ally conversed into a single objective function optimiza-
between line segment EF0 and line segment GH0 can tion problem by weighting different objective functions.
also be obtained. To avoid the collision between the The effects of the various objective functions in the
link d60 of the laparoscope arm and the link d60 of the optimization can only be determined by the weighting
instrument arm, the following criteria should be factors. In addition, the selection of the weighting fac-
satisfied tors depends heavily on the practical experiences. In
this article, the NSGA-II algorithm based on multi-
8
< MinfDer , Del g.wr objective optimization is adopted to optimize the links
y \yE ð20Þ of the mechanical arm system.20–22 NSGA-II algorithm
: G adopts the non-dominated sorting mechanism and
yC \yE
introduces the calculation method with elitist strategy
where wr is the minimum diameter of the link. and crowding degree. It has been proved that the algo-
For each inverse solution in the incision configura- rithm has high computational efficiency and stability.
tion group, if criteria (7) and (20) are satisfied simulta- Now, the NSGA-II algorithm has been successfully
neously, it means that there is no collision between applied in many engineering optimization designs and
mechanical arms for this configuration. Checking all becomes one of the mainstream solutions to multi-
the inverse solutions of each incision configuration objective questions.23
group, the number of collision-free inverse solution The motion range and the target coverage of the
ni (i = 1, 2, 3, . . . , N ) can be obtained. If the total num- laparoscope arm are different from those of the instru-
ber of the configurations is N, the average number of ment arms. Therefore, in this article, the following
collision-free inverse solution NCS can be used as the parameters are taken as the optimization variables of
index for the optimization of the mechanical arms the system, that is, the links and angle of the laparo-
scope arm ae2, ae3, ae4, de6 and ae, and the links and
1X N
angle of instrument arm a2, a3, a4 d6, a as well as the
NCS = ni (i = 1, 2, 3, . . . , N ) ð21Þ spacing D0 between mechanical arms. Based on the
N i=1
analyses above, the overall optimization objective func-
tion of the manipulator can be formulated as follows
8 ne
Case study based on NSGA-II method >
>
> f (1) = TARe = N 3 100%
>
>
> nt
e
In this article, the average number of collision-free >
>
>
> f (2) = TAR t = 3 100%
inverse solution NCS and the reachable rate of mechan- >
> Nt
<
ical arms within the target areas TAR are used as the 1X N
ð22Þ
main optimization objectives. Since the shorter links > f (3) = NCS =  ni
>
> N
may increase the mechanical arm stiffness and make >
> i = 1
>
> f (4) = Le = ae2 + ae3 + ae4 + de6
the structure more compact, the total length of the links >
>
>
> f (5) = Lt = a2 + a3 + a4 + d6
>
:
and the spacing of the mechanical arms are employed f (6) = D0
as the second optimization objectives. Therefore, the
optimization of minimally invasive surgical mechanical In the NSGA-II algorithm, either for the
arms is a problem of multi-objective optimization. The initialization-formed individuals or for the new genera-
various objectives of the multi-objective optimization tion of individuals, they can only select values within a
question are usually coupled, so it is rather difficult to given range of the variables which is determined by the
find an optimal solution to make all objectives optimal limitations from the minimum permissible size of the
simultaneously. As a result, the solution of the multi- mechanical arm and the operation space occupied by
objective optimization problem is a set of non-inferior the overall system. The initial scope of each link is
solutions, that is, the Pareto optimal solution set. For given in Table 3.

Table 3. The initial range of optimization variables.

Laparoscope arm ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) D0 (m)
0.25–0.5 0.1–0.3 0.25–0.5 0.8–1.2 15–75

Instrument arm a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) ae (°) 0.2–0.5

0.25–0.5 0.1–0.3 0.25–0.5 0.8–1.2 15–75

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10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 4. Results of optimization.

1 ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) TARe (%) Le (m) D0 (m)
0.259 0.141 0.282 0.820 68.33 100 1.502 0.3272
a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) a (°) TARt (%) Lt (m) NCS
0.257 0.206 0.250 0.852 49.14 100 1.565 797.7
2 ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) TARe (%) Le (m) D0 (m)
0.250 0.100 0.250 0.941 28.66 95.6 1.541 0.294
a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) a (°) TARt (%) Lt (m) NCS
0.250 0.100 0.258 0.837 28.32 97.9 1.445 92.3
3 ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) TARe (%) Le (m) D0 (m)
0.272 0.100 0.252 0.815 45.06 100 1.439 0.402
a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) a (°) TARt (%) Lt (m) NCS
0.311 0.277 0.274 0.846 60.71 100 1.708 625.8
4 ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) TARe (%) Le (m) D0 (m)
0.257 0.100 0.252 0.866 65.81 100 1.475 0.390
a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) a (°) TARt (%) Lt (m) NCS
0.253 0.268 0.334 0.860 52.11 100 1.715 239.4
5 ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) TARe (%) Le (m) D0 (m)
0.377 0.102 0.373 0.802 57.55 100 1.654 0.500
a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) a (°) TARt (%) Lt (m) NCS
0.365 0.102 0.276 0.811 56.69 98.4 1.554 438.5
6 ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) TARe (%) Le (m) D0 (m)
0.255 0.101 0.344 0.812 69.48 98.9 1.512 0.307
a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) a (°) TARt (%) Lt (m) NCS
0.398 0.151 0.472 0.891 51.94 100 1.911 55.9
7 ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) TARe (%) Le (m) D0 (m)
0.251 0.161 0.291 0.803 58.47 100 1.506 0.498
a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) a (°) TARt (%) Lt (m) NCS
0.343 0.102 0.252 0.876 42.99 100 1.573 1837.4
8 ae2 (m) ae3 (m) ae4 (m) de6 (m) ae (°) TARe (%) Le (m) D0 (m)
0.251 0.100 0.393 0.800 70.11 100 1.544 0.411
a2 (m) a3 (m) a4 (m) d6 (m) a (°) TARt (%) Lt (m) NCS
0.375 0.197 0.432 0.807 54.17 100 1.811 229.6

Results and analysis of the optimization The NCS values in the 2th, 4th and 8th group of Table
4 are much smaller than that of other groups, in other
The target area is meshed by a constant-length distance
words, if we design the mechanical arms with the data
of 3 cm. The minimum structural size of d60 is 55 cm, the
of the 2th, 4th or 8th groups, the minimally invasive
sampling interval of the second and third rotary joints is
surgery robot in the preoperative placement is more
5°, the total number of individuals in the population of
prone to collide compared with other groups.
genetic algorithm is 50 and the evolution algebra is 80.
On the basis of the above analysis, in order to obtain
Then, the Pareto solution set obtained by NSGA-II is
high system stiffness, the total length of the links for
shown in Table 4. Finally, the optimal solution can be
each laparoscope or instrument arms should be as short
evaluated and selected via actual needs.
as possible. For the purpose of making the robot sys-
In order to meet the requirements of abdominal
tem more compact, the spacing between mechanical
minimally invasive surgery, the workspace of the RCM
arms should be as small as possible too. Hence, a com-
point of the mechanical arms should cover the whole
promising choice should be made between the total
target operation area at least. Therefore, the TAR val-
length Le, Lt and the spacing D0 according to your
ues of the mechanical arms should be considered as the
actual need. By analyzing the evaluation indexes above,
primary index. The TAR value of instrument arms in
in this paper, we prefer to choose the group of data
the 5th group and the TAR value of laparoscope arm
with high value of NSC index. Finally, we take the data
in the 6th group of Table 4 are lower than those of the
in the 7th group of Table 4 as the final optimal results
other groups, and therefore the two groups of data
of the minimally invasive surgical manipulator.
should be excluded from the candidate list.
In addition, the Pareto solutions with a large NCS
value should be chosen. If the NCS value is larger, the
Conclusion
interference of the preoperative positioning mechan-
isms will less likely to occur and the establishment of In this article, the mechanical design of an abdominal
initial position and orientation will be more flexible. minimally invasive surgical manipulator is presented.

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Wang et al.
From the perspective of the optimization, two evalua-
tion indexes, that is, TAR and NCS, are proposed to
maximize the motion range of the mechanical arms’
RCM point and minimize the interference possibility
among the mechanical arms. In the optimization pro-
cess, the NSGA-II algorithm is employed to calculate
the length of the kinematics links of the manipulator.
From the obtained Pareto solution set, the optimal
dimension of the mechanical arms is selected based on
the actual requirements. The optimization methodol-
ogy outlined in this article can be used and extended in
the design process of the similar minimally invasive sur-
gical robot.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests
regarding the publication of this article.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding
agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
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