Design, Fabrication and Performance of a Flexible Minimally Invasive Surgery Manipulator Integrated with Soft Actuation and Variable Stiffness

doi:10.3901/JME.2018.17.053

Abstract

Abstract: Conventional surgical manipulators are in straight-bar shape and made of rigid materials mostly, which fail to adapt to the minimally invasive surgical operation using natural orifices. Therefore, a flexible surgical manipulator, with multi-DOF deformation and variable stiffness abilities via pneumatic artificial muscle actuation and fiber jamming techniques, is presented. The integrated manufacturing process of the manipulator unit is developed. An experimental test system is set up to obtain the nonlinear relationships between the bending deformation, output force of the pneumatic artificial muscle actuator and the air pressure. The relationships between anti-bending ability of a single unit and negative pressure, fiber density and fiber arrangement are further studied. The optimized design scheme is obtained. Within a complex system, the multi-DOF deformation in obstacle-avoiding and the stiffness tunability of the manipulator are demonstrated.

Key words: fiber jamming, minimally invasive surgery, pneumatic artificial muscle, variable stiffness

CLC Number:

TP242

CHEN Yuyu, LIU Lei, LI Bo, WEI Chao, WANG Shuxin, LI Dichen. Design, Fabrication and Performance of a Flexible Minimally Invasive Surgery Manipulator Integrated with Soft Actuation and Variable Stiffness[J]. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2018, 54(17): 53-61.

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