Design and control of an actuator for colonoscopy
Résumé
In this paper, the authors designed a new version of bendable robotic manipulator for colonoscopy called EDORA2. It is made of silicone rubber. The outer diameter of the tip is 17mm which is lesser than the average diameter of colon (20mm). The promising results of this new prototype shows that it can bend until 120 degrees. From a kinematic analysis, a direct kinematic model analogous to the forward kinematics of a conventional industrial robot kinematics chain has been put forward. The non-linearity between the displacement of the chamber and the applied pressure is modeled by using a polynomial approximation. In addition, the two-layered control architecture is adopted for the control of robot in the operational space. A null space method is used to solve the inverse Jacobian matrix. Simulation and preliminary results are given to validate the control algorithm.