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When I started out at Michigan about a
decade ago, we set out to solve one of
the most challenging problems in
minimally invasive surgery.
This was a problem that most people
thought was unsolvable.
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[snaps glove on]
Minimally invasive surgery allows
patients to recover faster, they get back to
work faster, they have less pain after
surgery, they get out of hospital quicker.
We can't give those same benefits to all
patients because we haven't had the
instrumentation, you know, to allow us to
do that. When I was trained first in
surgery the only tools we had were
tools that looked like this.
These are tools that looks like anything
really out of your toolbox or at your
home and it required us to make big
incisions in patients. A big advance
came really early in my career was the
advancement into minimally invasive
surgery where small ports were placed
through patients and small
incisions were made and what that
required was for the tools to be long.
>> Awtar: One of the fundamental challenges in
existing instruments is that it has no
dexterity so it's a tool shaft, a handle
and jaws that open and close that's
remained the paradigm.
>> Geiger: The problem is it
moves in an opposite direction of what
the surgeon his hand moves so I can't do
actually fine delicate movements.
>>Awtar: There's
been some innovation but one of the biggest
challenges with this kind of technology
is that to produce a pretty simple
motion at the end effector I had to
produce a rather complicated and awkward
movement on the user and on the surgeon
side.The instrument has its own
universal joint the user has their own
input joint. These two joints are separated
in space and that is ultimately what
leads to that awkwardness in motion. In
fact, you see that to move the end
effector up, I'm actually pointing my
wrist down and similarly to move the
end effector toward the right, I'm moving my
wrist to the left.
The core innovation in this Flex device
is this virtual center mechanism that
offers a virtual center of rotation for
the handle that is co-located with the
user wrist.
Unlike any other device the center of
rotation of the handle is located
somewhere else in space versus in
this device, the center of rotation of the
handle has been made to coincide with
the wrist of the user and that is
accomplished via this really novel
parallel kinematic mechanism that makes
use of these transmission strips that
capture the two locations of the surgeon's
wrist and then transmits them via
cables that extend throughout the tool frame and
the tool shaft to the end effector.
>>Geiger: If I
move my hand up, the device goes up, right?
I'm demonstrating it by using the other
hand just to show you how natural it is.
If I move left, right, up, down, wherever I
move my hand the tip of this instrument
moves. I'm coming into the tissue
perpendicular the way we want to and
I'm following the curve of the needle.
>>Awtar: In addition to this in this device there is yet
another innovation which is how the
frame is mounted to the forearm.
This is a rather unique configuration
that doesn't exist in any other
instrument and here by virtue of
connecting this via a gimbal what we do
is we increase the reach of the end effector
inside the patient's body in a manner
that remains comfortable and ergonomic
for the surgeon. Yet another innovation
and capability of this device is the ability
to rotate a roll infinitely. This is a
very important functionality when it
comes to sewing. This kind of innovation
goes well beyond applications just in
surgery this is an example of a
remote-control device that is done
purely mechanically without the use of any
robots or sensors or actuators or computers.
>>Bowles: In 1999,
the surgical robot called daVinci came
to market and this does move like the
surgeon's wrist, but it takes a 2.5
million dollar robot on the backend to
drive it.
We deliver the similar intuitive control
that the robot does but without the
robot.
>>Geiger: What this does is bring robotic
like functionality to every O.R. every day,
any hour of the day.
>>Awtar: It's the uniqueness
of the university environment that really
enabled us. The fact that we have an
engineering school, a med school and a
business community in this ecosystem
truly enabled the coming together of
these various skills
and helped translate a technology
from the lab into a product.
In order to gain deeper understanding
inside of the battery we literally
created a window to be able to look
inside. We call it a Visualization Cell,
we shortened it to Vis Cell.
The materials that are used in lithium metal batteries...