34 Int. J. Mechanisms and Robotic Systems, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2014 Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Miniature endoscope manipulator for minimally invasive surgery Raj Kumar Pal* and Amod Kumar CSIR-Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Sector 30 C, Chandigarh-160030, India E-mail: rajkpal@gmail.com E-mail: csioamod@yahoo.com *Corresponding author Abstract: This paper deals with the design and analysis of a manipulator to control the position and orientation of an endoscope during minimally invasive abdominal surgery. The endoscope manipulator assists the surgeon to manipulate endoscope orientation for viewing the area of interest inside the abdomen. The designed manipulator has three degrees of freedom (DOF): one translational (for taking the endoscope in and out of the abdomen) and two rotational (for desired orientation of endoscope) and is operated by the surgeon using a foot-pedal to eliminate the need of an endoscope assistant. Foot pedal control allows the surgeon to use both hands for the surgery. The elimination of the need for manual stabilisation of endoscope leads to removal of tremor, which occurs due to handling of endoscope manually. Thus endoscope can be placed closer to the target organ with fewer collisions with inner parts of the body and other surgical tools being used. The designed endoscope manipulator presented in the study is small in size, light weight, simple, easy to setup and use, when compared to conventional laparoscopic surgical systems. It has been tested for its motions at the laboratory, which were found satisfactory. Keywords: endoscope manipulator; foot pedal; minimally invasive surgery; robotic surgery. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Pal, R.K. and Kumar, A. (2014) ‘Miniature endoscope manipulator for minimally invasive surgery’, Int. J. Mechanisms and Robotic Systems, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.34–50. Biographical notes: Raj Kumar Pal completed his MTech (Advanced Instrumentation Engineering) from Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), CSIR-CSIO Chandigarh (India) and BTech (Mechanical Engineering) from VIT University, Vellore (India). He is pursuing his PhD at the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), CSIR-CSIO Chandigarh. Presently, he is working as a scientist in the area of opto-mechanical systems at the Department of Optical Devices and Systems, CSIR-CSIO Chandigarh. His areas of interests include design and mechanics of mechanisms, advanced manufacturing and robotics. Amod Kumar obtained his BE (Hons.) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, ME in Electronics and PhD in Biomedical Signal Processing. He has more than 32 years of experience in research and development of different instruments in the area of process control, biomedical engineering and prosthetics. He is currently heading the biomedical instrumentation activity in Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO), Chandigarh. He has 33 publications in reputed journals. He worked at Technical University Berlin for one year on a German fellowship in 1987–1988.