Structure design and trafficability of colonoscopic robot

The continuum robot has excellent bending ability and thus has good adaptability and application prospect to congested environments, such as pipe and tract. In order to develop a medical robot for colon diseases examination, a colonoscopic robot with continuum strucutre is designed based on the bionic principle of continuum robot. The bending model of human colon is built with colon anatomy, a control strategy based on the multi-section continuum structure is proposed, and its implementation algorithms in 3-D environment are discussed. Finally, the reasonability of mechanical structure and the trafficability in colon tract environment are validated by visual simulation with the robot structure, colon model and control strategy. This research lays good foundation for future research of colonoscopic robot and has referential significance for the motion control of continuum robot in pipe environment.