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A Novel Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robotic Colonoscope Based on a Rubber Bellows
Colorectal cancer is a serious threat to human health. Colonoscopy is the most effective procedure for the inspection of colorectal cancer. However, traditional colonoscopy may cause pain, which can lead to the patient’s fear of colonoscopy. The use of active-motion colonoscopy robots is expected to...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9030941/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35457939 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13040635 |
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author | Chen, Jinyan Yang, Jianlin Qian, Feng Lu, Qing Guo, Yu Sun, Zhijun Chen, Chao |
author_facet | Chen, Jinyan Yang, Jianlin Qian, Feng Lu, Qing Guo, Yu Sun, Zhijun Chen, Chao |
author_sort | Chen, Jinyan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Colorectal cancer is a serious threat to human health. Colonoscopy is the most effective procedure for the inspection of colorectal cancer. However, traditional colonoscopy may cause pain, which can lead to the patient’s fear of colonoscopy. The use of active-motion colonoscopy robots is expected to replace traditional colonoscopy procedures for colorectal cancer screening, without causing pain to patients. This paper proposes an inchworm-like soft colonoscopy robot based on a rubber spring. The motion mechanism of the robot consists of two anchoring units and an elongation unit. The elongation unit of the robot is driven by 3 cables during contraction and by its inherent elasticity during extension. The balloon is selected as the anchoring mechanism of the robot. It has soft contact with the colon and will not damage the colon wall, which means no discomfort is caused. The elastic force test of the rubber spring shows that the elongation unit of the robot has sufficient restorative force to drive the robot to move forward and backward. The influence of the balloon’s expansion size on the dexterity of the robot head is analyzed, and the functions of the balloons are expounded. The balloon can not only assist the robot in its locomotion but also assist the robot to perform a better inspection. The robot can move successfully in a horizontal, straight, and inclined isolated pig colon, showing great clinical application potential. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9030941 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90309412022-04-23 A Novel Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robotic Colonoscope Based on a Rubber Bellows Chen, Jinyan Yang, Jianlin Qian, Feng Lu, Qing Guo, Yu Sun, Zhijun Chen, Chao Micromachines (Basel) Article Colorectal cancer is a serious threat to human health. Colonoscopy is the most effective procedure for the inspection of colorectal cancer. However, traditional colonoscopy may cause pain, which can lead to the patient’s fear of colonoscopy. The use of active-motion colonoscopy robots is expected to replace traditional colonoscopy procedures for colorectal cancer screening, without causing pain to patients. This paper proposes an inchworm-like soft colonoscopy robot based on a rubber spring. The motion mechanism of the robot consists of two anchoring units and an elongation unit. The elongation unit of the robot is driven by 3 cables during contraction and by its inherent elasticity during extension. The balloon is selected as the anchoring mechanism of the robot. It has soft contact with the colon and will not damage the colon wall, which means no discomfort is caused. The elastic force test of the rubber spring shows that the elongation unit of the robot has sufficient restorative force to drive the robot to move forward and backward. The influence of the balloon’s expansion size on the dexterity of the robot head is analyzed, and the functions of the balloons are expounded. The balloon can not only assist the robot in its locomotion but also assist the robot to perform a better inspection. The robot can move successfully in a horizontal, straight, and inclined isolated pig colon, showing great clinical application potential. MDPI 2022-04-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9030941/ /pubmed/35457939 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13040635 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Chen, Jinyan Yang, Jianlin Qian, Feng Lu, Qing Guo, Yu Sun, Zhijun Chen, Chao A Novel Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robotic Colonoscope Based on a Rubber Bellows |
title | A Novel Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robotic Colonoscope Based on a Rubber Bellows |
title_full | A Novel Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robotic Colonoscope Based on a Rubber Bellows |
title_fullStr | A Novel Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robotic Colonoscope Based on a Rubber Bellows |
title_full_unstemmed | A Novel Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robotic Colonoscope Based on a Rubber Bellows |
title_short | A Novel Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robotic Colonoscope Based on a Rubber Bellows |
title_sort | novel inchworm-inspired soft robotic colonoscope based on a rubber bellows |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9030941/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35457939 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13040635 |
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