Control system architecture for a minimally invasive surgical robot.

As the field of surgical robotics continues to evolve, it is important to keep patient safety in mind. This paper describes a safety control architecture aimed at moving an experimental system in the direction of intrinsically safe operation. The system includes safety features such as: a small number of states, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) state transition control, active enable, brakes, E-STOP, and a surgeon foot pedal.