A soft inflatable robot driven by hydraulic folded pouch actuators for minimally invasive surgery
Author(s)
Yang, Jianlin
Runciman, Mark
Avery, James
Sun, Zhijun
Mylonas, George
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
This paper presents a soft, inflatable, cable-driven parallel robot (CDPR) for Minimally Invasive Surgery. The CDPR has 5 degrees of freedom and is driven by 6 cables and 6 hydraulic folded actuators. The actuator utilizes a folded chamber to pull a cable. The robot comprises a soft hexagonal variable-stiffness scaffold with a welded internal triangular support, which increases the stiffness of the robot when pressurized. The fabrication methodology is demonstrated in detail. A test platform is designed to obtain the characteristics of the folding actuator. The relationship between input liquid volume and actuator displacement can be predicted well by a geometry-based method. The displacement output of the actuator can reach 22 mm, which is nearly twice its length in its zero-volume folded state. Robot repeatability tests show mean and root mean square errors below 0.3 mm. The robot is made from plastic laminate sheets of thickness 120 μm and can deploy from 100 mm in length and 14 mm in diameter when folded, into an inflatable hollow hexagonal prism with 29 mm side length and 78 mm edge length. Deployment in a colon phantom is demonstrated and simulated surgery is conducted to validate the robot performance.
Date Issued
2024-05-01
Date Acceptance
2024-03-25
Citation
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2024, 9 (5), pp.4870-4877
ISSN
2377-3766
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
4870
End Page
4877
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Volume
9
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. For more information, see
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/lra.2024.3386022
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2024-04-08