Static Balancing of a 5-DoF Mechanism with Manual Reconfiguration Feature

This work presents the static balancing of a mechanism with 5 degrees of freedom. This specific feature allows it to manipulate a surgical tool and hold it in a certain position with no locking system required. The proposed mechanism is made of a linear parallelogram mechanism and an angular spherical decoupled architecture. Its kinematics is studied to permit the analysis of its gravitational potential energy. Several specific mechanical concepts based on tension springs are designed and implemented to generate an elastic potential energy that compensates the gravitational potential energy. This method allows the conservation of the mechanism total potential energy, which is required for the static balancing. A prototype of the statically balanced mechanism is manufactured. Its static balancing is successfully testing.