This paper focuses on the design of a parallel robot designed for robotic assisted minimally invasive pancreatic surgery. Two alternative architectures, called ATHENA-1 and ATHENA-2, each with 4 degrees of freedom (DOF) are proposed. Their kinematic schemes are presented, and the conceptual 3D CAD models are illustrated. Based on these, two Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations were performed to determine which architecture has the higher stiffness. A workspace quantitative analysis is performed to further assess the usability of the two proposed parallel architectures related to the medical tasks. The obtained results are used to select the architecture which fit the required design criteria and will be used to develop the experimental model of the surgical robot.

The paper presents the kinematic modelling for the coupled motion of a 6-DOF surgical parallel robot PARA-SILSROB which guides a mobile platform carrying the surgical instruments, and the actuators of the sub-modules which hold these tools. To increase the surgical procedure safety, a closed form solution for the kinematic model is derived and then, the forward and inverse kinematic models for the mobile orientation platform are obtained. The kinematic models are used in numerical simulations for the reorientation of the endoscopic camera, which imposes an automated compensatory motion from the active instruments' mod-ules.