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Speaking of which, we must mention the original design concept of this surgical robot.

In fact, when surgical robots were first born, they were not suitable for 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 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 for these scientists to develop a robot that soldiers could operate on the battlefield.

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

Even if possible, doctors can operate remotely to help soldiers on the battlefield complete operations, thereby achieving 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 people.

This idea is very whimsical and very bold, and such a plan was thought of in the 1980s.

You have to admire the Americans for their great imagination. Of course, this may also have something to do with the Star Wars project they were leading domestically at the time.

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

Unfortunately, in 1990, due to the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, the Star Wars project was terminated.

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

However, the military soon contacted the National Institutes of Health of the United States through their connections, and this institution continued to inject funds into the project and conduct research.

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

However, one of the scientists involved in the project at that time, Dr. Frederick Moore, was very interested in the project, and he applied to the project team many times.

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

Unfortunately, it has never been approved before.

In 1994, he purchased all the intellectual property rights of the first-generation robot with his own money, established Intuitive Surgery Company in 1995, and then packaged and launched the first-generation product in 1996.

The Americans actually developed such a robot more than 20 years ago, which shows the terrifying technological foundation and strength of the United States.

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

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

In the past few years, the fifth-generation products of Intuitive Sensing Company have begun to be sold all over the world...

When American scientists designed this robot, their main consideration was to use it in harsh environments such as battlefields, so the requirements for the robotic arm were higher than those for industrial robots.

So they thought of many ways.

For example, the entire equipment is divided into three parts. One part is the doctor's console, the robotic arm system, and the imaging system.

The doctor's console, as the name suggests, is the platform for doctors to operate equipment.

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

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 camera arm, which, as the name suggests, holds the camera. The other three are called robotic arms, which are also operating arms.

At the beginning of the operation, the doctor first inserts the scope arm into the patient's surgical area through the console to expose the surgical field.

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

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

At this time, the surgical operation is completed by relying on the mechanical wrist joint at the front end of the robotic arm, as well as the clamp or tool.

Relying on these small tools, doctors can complete a series of surgical actions such as dissection, cutting, suturing, clamping, electrocoagulation, etc. in the patient's surgical area.

Moreover, this mechanical wrist and the front clamp are very flexible, with up to 7 degrees of freedom, which is more flexible than the human wrist.

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

Last year, Leonardo da Vinci did an advertisement in which a doctor operated two robotic arms, inserted through the narrow mouth of a wine bottle, and performed an operation on a grape inside the bottle.

It is no exaggeration at all. They cut open the belly of the grape and then completed the sutures on the grape.

The entire surgical process can be seen online.

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

Therefore, although it is very expensive to use surgical robots to complete operations now, this equipment really means the future of surgery.

Because there are many robotic arms on the surgical robot, and controlling such robotic arms requires great precision and must be extremely flexible.

As a result, it is impossible to use rolling four-cylinder bearings to control.

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

For example, a motor is installed at the joint of each robotic arm.

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

Then it is released through the motor, or the steel wire is pulled closer to drive the control wheel, thereby controlling the micro mechanical joints, and finally controlling the clutch to control the cutter and clamp at the end of the robotic arm to complete the surgical action.

It sounds like it, but 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 American people's imagination.

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 robotic arms through bearings.

It was not until later that he learned that they did not use bearings at all, but used other mechanical methods.

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

However, it is precisely because this robot does not use ball screw bearings that it greatly reduces the difficulty of assembling the robot itself.

If this robot uses ball screw bearings to control the robotic arm, it will be difficult for him to die.

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

And once people think that you are importing this thing and using it in some inappropriate places, they will not sell it to you.

No matter how high the price you pay!

Moreover, the bearings used by industrial machine tools and robots have very high accuracy requirements, and the highest accuracy must be as low as a few microns.

Therefore, the price is also very expensive. If Huang Haibin were to pay for it, even if they were willing to sell it to him, he wouldn't be able to afford much because it was too expensive.

For surgical robots, millimeter-level accuracy is enough.

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

Therefore, although the driving device used in this set of robotic arms is far less accurate than industrial ball screw bearings.

But if we talk about the cost, it is much lower than industrial bearings.

You must know that the ball screw bearings used in industrial machine tools are so expensive for another reason, that is, their durability must be high.

You need to consider the working environment of industrial machine tools, such as when current five-axis machine tools process workpieces.

The workers put a large iron weight directly on the fixture, and let the machine tool continuously change the cutting tool to cut and grind on the iron lump.

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

If normal physics were followed, the tool would probably have bounced off at this time.

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

The reason why this happens is because the calculation system of the machine tool will constantly adjust the data according to the shape change of the iron lump, and output instructions to the motor to let the motor adjust the output power.

The final execution of this task falls on the ball screw bearing, which must constantly control the depth of the tool to adjust the processing angle and ensure accuracy.

So this is the most powerful thing about ball screw bearings, and also the reason why they are expensive.

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

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

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

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

And in this field, it can be said that Americans have always dominated!

Even if Germany and Japan are excellent in industrial technology, in this field of cutting-edge technology, the best ones still lose to the United States.

For example, the camera lens used by Leonardo da Vinci was specially designed and customized for them by Hopkins University.
Chapter completed!