Intelligent Soft Surgical Robots for Next‐Generation Minimally Invasive Surgery

Abstract

Endowed with the expected visions for future surgery, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has become one of the most rapid developing areas in modern surgery. Soft robotics, which originates from interdisciplinary advances in materials, fabrication, and electronics, featuring better adaptability and safer interaction, holds great promises in addressing current technical challenges in MIS, which are difficult to be solved with current rigid robotic technologies. For the first time, herein, the expected characteristics of next-generation MIS from the surgeons' perspectives are analyzed and the recent progress of soft surgical instruments from three different aspects is comprehensively summarized: engineering design, fabrication techniques, and human-robot interaction. Perspectives of nextgeneration soft surgical robots are then discussed, where some exciting possibilities are emphasized. It is believed that further developments of intelligent soft robotics enable the next-generation MIS to agilely navigate to the target and conduct dexterous diagnostic or therapeutic procedures without any trade-offs in invasiveness and ultimately be a propitious solution for future surgery.

When the End Effector Is a Laser: A Review of Robotics in Laser Surgery

“…Such a problem can possibly lead to disruption of the functionality of other medical instruments that are within the human body or in the operating room, and metallic surgical tools (i.e., scalpels, forceps). [ 78 ] Although those problems can be mitigated by placing the magnetic field generator closer to the robot to minimize the distance between the two and reduce the required magnetic field, this may not be an option depending on the clinical application. Thus, the future implementation of magnetic actuation for optical fiber steering should further consider the trade‐offs between the size of the robot and its performance (i.e., range of motion and required power).…”

“…[ 82 ] Nevertheless, these soft robots possess several drawbacks including size, noise, leakage from fluidic actuators, slow actuation speed, and inaccuracy in motion control. [ 78 ] The viscoelastic properties of soft polymer materials introduce hysteresis and nonlinear behavior in open loop conditions. The slow response caused by fluidic actuation further complicates the control of nonlinear behavior and hinders the movement of optical fibers.…”

Data‐Driven Navigation of Ferromagnetic Soft Continuum Robots Based on Machine Learning

“…Soft continuum robots have shown great prospects in biomedical applications, [1][2][3] such as targeted drug delivery, [4,5] tissue stents, [6] and minimally invasive surgery (MIS). [7,8] Among them, ferromagnetic soft continuum robots (FCSRs) have attracted much attention recently due to their passability to tissues and organs, rapid and accurate adjustability, and remote controllability in confined spaces. [9][10][11][12] The magnetic soft materials [12][13][14] take elastomers or hydrogel as the matrix and combine it with magnetic microparticles, which can easily construct small-scale soft robotic systems with small surface friction and therefore holds great potential in biomedical applications.…”

Hybrid Compliant Musculoskeletal System for Fast Actuation in Robots

“…Often, soft actuators are comprised of novel active materials and complex auxiliary circuits. Utilizing 3D printing, a variety of active materials can be leveraged, such as hydrogels [ 13 ], conductive polylactic acid [ 14 ], shape-memory alloys [ 15 ], and multiphase materials [ 16 ]. The auxiliary circuits can be thermal [ 16 ], fluidic [ 17 ], magnetic [ 18 ], or electrical [ 6 ].…”