Fabrication of highly articulated miniature snake robot structures using in-mold assembly of compliant joints

Abstract

Snake inspired robots have promising applications in minimally invasive surgery. However one of the most significant challenges, which presents itself as a roadblock to large scale exploitation of this technology, is the high manufacturing costs associated with fabricating highly articulated miniature structures. We present a method to fabricate such highly articulated miniature snake robots using a modular mold design. This design combines the benefits of in-mold assembly and insert molding to fabricate highly articulating miniature structures. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the modular mold design for making snake robot chains. This paper also discusses a mathematical framework which can be used to optimize the size of the compliant links and thereby the overall cross section of the snake robot chain that can be manufactured using the modular mold design.