Design and Modelling of Robots for Minimally Invasive Surgery

The work presented in this thesis focuses on two robots, the remote centre of motion mechanism and the concentric tube robot, respectively. The research outcomes will benefit the development of more capable and dexterous surgical robots and thus promote the application of robotic minimally invasive surgery. A novel remote centre of motion mechanism with reduced footprint is proposed to minimise the chance of collisions between robotic surgical arms. Novel kinetostatic modelling approaches for the concentric tube robots are derived, and the computational efficiencies are evaluated to identify the suitable applications for the individual modelling approaches.