A review of recent advancements in soft and flexible robots for medical applications

Abstract

Background: Soft and flexible robots for medical applications are needed to change their flexibility over a wide range to perform tasks adequately. The mechanism and theory of flexibility has been a scientific issue and is of interest to the community. Methods: Recent advancements of bionics, flexible actuation, sensing, and intelligent control algorithms as well as tunable stiffness have been referenced when soft and flexible robots are developed. The benefits and limitations of these relevant studies and how they affect the flexibility are discussed, and possible research directions are explored. Results: The bionic materials and structures that demonstrate the potential capabilities of the soft medical robot flexibility are the fundamental guarantee for clinical medical applications. Flexible actuation that used to provide power, intelligent control algorithms which are the exact executors, and the wide range stiffness of the soft materials are the three important influence factors for soft medical robots. Conclusion: Some reasonable suggestions and possible solutions for soft and flexible medical robots are proposed, including novel materials, flexible actuation concepts with a built-in source of energy or power, programmable flexibility, and adjustable stiffness. K E Y W O R D S bionics, flexible actuation, sensing and intelligent control algorithm, soft and flexible robots, tunable stiffness 1 | INTRODUCTION The application of robots in the medical field dates back to a few decades ago, but the recent use of soft materials in medical robots has enabled new capabilities that create possibilities for medical treatments in which much safer human-robot interaction is preferred. 1-3 Soft medical robots are defined as soft and flexible electro-mechanical systems with high flexibility performing medical applications. Soft medical robots are multidisciplinary emerging technologies 4 such as materials science, bionics, mechanics, electronics, and computer science. At present, soft medical robots have been used for surgery, 5diagnosis, 6 rehabilitation, 7 prostheses, 8 artificial organs, 9 drug delivery 10 and many other medical applications. [11][12][13][14][15][16] The movements such as bending, torsion, extension, and contact operations 17 required high flexibility and deformability 18 of soft medical robots.Soft medical robots exhibit a range of degrees of flexibility during medical applications. In this paper, flexibility is used to describe the characteristics of soft medical robots that have a proper combination of stiffness and compliance and it is on the scientific level. Actually, flexibility reflects in three aspects: the variety of shape, the wide range of stiffness, and the adequate force applied. It is necessary for soft medical robots that it can change their flexibility degree over a wide range to perform tasks adequately. For example, there has certainly been a longterm demand in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) applications for soft medical robots that can move, deform, navigate narrow gaps, and int...

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