An intuitive control console for a minimally invasive surgical robotic system has been developed. The system has five degrees of freedom (DOF), which are configured to imitate the traditional laparoscopic forceps both in appearance and function, providing the surgeons with a familiar feel and reducing the training time for the new surgeons. A prototype of the control console was built and tested for a standard forceps grasping task in a virtual-reality surgery training system. The results show that the virtual forceps follows the motion trajectory of the control console in real time and with good precision. © 2014 IEEE.