Partial gravity compensation of a surgical robot

Surgical robots are safety-critical devices that require multiple domains of safety features. This article focuses on the passive gravity compensation design optimization of a surgical robot. The limits of this optimization are related with the safety features including minimization of the total moving mass/inertia and compactness of the design. The particle swarm optimization method is used as a novel approach for the optimization of a parallel remote-center-of-motion mechanism. A compact design is achieved by partially balancing the mechanism, which also decreases the torque requirements from the actuators.