Design of a flexible robot toward transbronchial lung biopsy

Abstract

Transbronchial lung biopsy is an effective and less-invasive treatment for the early diagnosis of lung cancer. However, the limited dexterity of existing endoscopic instruments and the complexity of bronchial access prevent the application of such procedures mainly for biopsy and diagnosis. This paper proposes a flexible robot for transbronchial lung biopsy with a cable-driven mechanism-based flexible manipulator. The robotic system of transbronchial lung biopsy is presented in detail, including the snake-bone end effector, the flexible catheters and the actuation unit. The kinematic analysis of the snake-bone end effector is conducted for the master-slave control. The experimental results show that the end effector reaches the target nodule through a narrow and tortuous pathway in a bronchial model. In conclusion, the proposed robotic system contributes to the field of advanced endoscopic surgery with high flexibility and controllability.

Design and development of a SLPM-based deployable robot

“…The model is constructed with a constant curvature by analogy with the analysis on kinematics of flexible robot [26], as shown in Fig. 5 and Table I, where the red box represents the curved plane.…”

“…Overall, deployable robot is very promising. In medical field, deployable robot may access the human body cavity for localization and surgical operation [4, 11, 25, 26]. In manufacturing and aerospace, deployable robot can access narrow environments to complete critical equipment assembly and disassembly free maintenance, so as to guarantee the safety of sophisticated devices [5, 21, 28].…”

“…Deployable robot has many drive modes, such as pneumatic mode [8], rod drive mode [20], and line drive mode [16,[21][22][23][24][25][26]. The line drive mode is usually used in some scenes with less stress and smaller space.…”

A Novel Robotic Bronchoscope System for Navigation and Biopsy of Pulmonary Lesions

“…The mechanism of the end effector is the key to the robotic bronchoscope moving flexibly in the airway, and it is a hot topic in the field of natural orifice transluminal surgical robots [ 16 – 19 ]. The most common ways are multiple interlocked segments and nickel–titanium (Ni–Ti) tube groove [ 20 ]. Liu et al [ 21 , 22 ] proposed an end effector with multiple segments, which has an outer diameter of 2.2 mm while keeping a large inner lumen with a diameter of 1.44 mm for bronchoscopic instruments.…”

Compliant and Flexible Robotic System with Parallel Continuum Mechanism for Transoral Surgery: A Pilot Cadaveric Study

“…Robot-assisted MIS technologies significantly enhance the surgeon's capacity by dexterous manipulators. In these technologies, the robotics for natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) procedures with less trauma have been playing an increasingly important role in recent years [3]; these include continuum manipulators [4] and flexible robots [5]. Transoral robotic surgery (TORS) as an emerging NOTES procedure allows for the resection of cancers from hard-to-reach areas of the upper aerodigestive tract to be completed via a transoral approach [6].…”