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

  • CHEN Yuyu ,
  • LIU Lei ,
  • LI Bo ,
  • WEI Chao ,
  • WANG Shuxin ,
  • LI Dichen
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  • 1. State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049;
    2. State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechanic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027;
    3. Key Laboratory of Mechanism Theory and Equipment Design of the Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300350

Received date: 2018-01-09

  Revised date: 2018-05-11

  Online published: 2018-09-05

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.

Cite this article

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 . DOI: 10.3901/JME.2018.17.053

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