  Miniaturized instruments are highly needed for robot assisted medical
healthcare and treatment, especially for less invasive surgery as it empowers
more flexible access to restricted anatomic intervention. But the robotic
design is more challenging due to the contradictory needs of miniaturization
and the capability of manipulating with a large dexterous workspace. Thus,
kinematic parameter optimization is of great significance in this case. To this
end, this paper proposes an approach based on dexterous workspace determination
for designing a miniaturized tendon-driven surgical instrument under necessary
restraints. The workspace determination is achieved by boundary determination
and volume estimation with partition and least-squares polynomial fitting
methods. The final robotic configuration with optimized kinematic parameters is
proved to be eligible with a large enough dexterous workspace and targeted
miniature size.
