A novel locomotion principle for endoscopic robot

Endoscopes are medical devices which can diagnose various kinds of diseases throughout the whole gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The conventional endoscopes cannot reach the small intestines and generate pain and discomfort to patients due to the stiffness of their body. Such disadvantages do not exist in endoscopic robots. However, the soft and elastic characters make the locomotion efficiency of endoscopic robot very low. To resolve this problem, it is necessary to find a special locomotion principle which fit the GI tract. In this paper, a novel locomotion principle is proposed, which is the first time used in the endoscopic robot. The locomotion principle is obtained by analyzing, simulating and simplifying the movement of mucuscilia system. To evaluate its performance, a prototype of the endoscopic robot adopting this locomotion principle is developed, which is driven by Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuator. An invitro experiment shows that the robot can move successfully with efficiency about 27%. The result of experiment validates that the proposed locomotion principle fit the GI tract well.