Abstract: A design and fabrication method of a novel airway stent is proposed to adapt to the trachea's structural differences. The variable stiffness property of the stent is designed to meet the different stiffness requirements before and after stent implantation. A stent delivery device is designed to change the shape of the stent through balloon dilation, to ensure the adaptive deformation of the stent in the trachea, in which a delivery channel for the optical fiber used for resin curing is reserved. A mobile platform and a five-axis robotic arm are designed to provide spatial movement ability and fine delivery operation capabilities. Components are integrated to complete the development of the robotic system for adaptive airway stent implantation. The theoretical analysis of the stent's design and deformation is proposed, and a compression test is conducted to validate the theory and to evaluate the compressive performance of the stent. The stents ofthe same initial size exhibited adaptability tothe lumens with different internal diameters and internal structures. Finally, the proposed robotic system wasexperimentally validated by conducting tracheal stent implantation in a human tracheal phantom.

Key words: surgical robot, stent implantation, multi-helix stent, adaptive deformation, variable stiffness