The DLR MIRO: a versatile lightweight robot for surgical applications

The paper presents a new torque-controlled lightweight robot for medical procedures developed at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center. Based on the experiences in lightweight robotics and anthropomorphic robotic hands, a small robot arm with 7 axis and torque-controlled joints tailored to surgical procedures has been designed. With an optimized anthropomorphic kinematics, integrated multi-modal sensors and flexible robot control architecture, the first prototype KINEMEDIC and the new generation MIRO, enhanced for endoscopic surgery, can easily be adapted to a wide range of different medical procedures and scenarios by the use of specialized instruments and compiling workflows within the robot control. With the options of both, Cartesian impedance and position control, MIRO is suited for tele-manipulation, shared autonomy and completely autonomous procedures. This paper focuses on system and hardware design of the robot, supplemented with a brief description on new specific control methods for the MIRO robot.