Fiber Optic 3-axis Force Sensing One-Piece Grasper for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Fiber Bragg grating (FBG), as a new type of sensing component, can effectively avoid electromagnetic interference compared to electrical sensors and has advantages such as small size, which makes it easy to be integrated into sensors and applied to complex environments. In this paper, a fiber-optic 3-axis force sensor for minimally invasive surgical instruments is developed. The sensor has an integrated design, and the FBG is integrated into a minimally invasive surgical grasper by a simple gluing method. Combined with the fiber grating strain sensing principle, the sensing performance of the FBG sensor for 3-axis force is verified by finite element simulation analysis. The static characteristics of the fiber-optic 3-axis force sensor were explored through static calibration experiments. The experiments show that the radial force sensitivity of the sensor is higher than 300pm/N, and the axial force sensitivity is higher than 100 pm/N.