A Biomimetic steering robot for Minimally invasive surgery application

Abstract

Minimally Invasive Surgery represents the future of many types of medical interventions such as keyhole neurosurgey or transluminal endoscopic surgery. These procedures involve inser- tion of surgical instruments such as needles and endoscopes into human body through small incision/ body cavity for biopsy and drug delivery. However, nearly all surgical instruments for these procedures are inserted manually and there is a long learning curve for surgeons to use them properly. Many research efforts have been made to design active instruments (endo- scope, needles) to improve this procedure during last decades. New robot mechanisms have been designed and used to improve the dexterity of current endoscope. Usually these robots are flexible and can pass the constrained space for fine manipulations. In recent years, a con- tinuum robotic mechanism has been investigated and designed for medical surgery. Those robots are characterized by the fact that their mechanical components do not have rigid links and discrete joints in contrast with traditional robot manipulators. The design of these robots is inspired by movements of animals parts such as tongues, elephant trunks and tentacles. The unusual compliance and redundant degrees of freedom of these robots provide strong potential to achieve delicate tasks successfully even in cluttered and unstructured environ- ments. This chapter will present a complete application of a continuum robot for Minimally Invasive Surgery of colonoscopy. This system is composed of a micro-robotic tip, a set of po- sition sensors and a real-time control systemfor guiding the exploration of colon. Details will be described on the modeling of the used pneumatic actuators, the design of the mechanical component, the kinematic model analysis and the control strategy for automatically guiding the progression of the device inside the human colon. Experimental results will be presented to check the performances of the whole system within a transparent tube