AUTOMATION OF SURGICAL PROCEDURES: COLONOSCOPY LOCOMOTION AND LAPAROSCOPIC SUTURING
Hossein Dehghani AshkezariThe overall goal of this work is to minimize the invasiveness of traditional
colonoscopy. Our locomotion approach takes advantage of longitudinal expansion of
a latex tube to propel the robot’s tip along the colon. In the preliminary ex-vivo
experiments, the robot successfully advanced 1.5 meters inside an excised curvilinear
porcine colon with average speed of 28 mm/sec, and was capable of traversing bends
ranging from 30 to 90 degrees. The robot creates less than 6 N of normal force at its
tip when it is pressurized to 90 kPa. This maximum force generates pressure of 44.17
mmHg at the tip, which is significantly lower than safe intraluminal human colonic
pressure of 80 mmHg. The robot design inherently prevents loop formation in the
colon, which is recognized as the main cause of post-procedural pain in patients.