11 accepted papers
Colonoscopy demands multi-finger coordinated motion to achieve safe navigation. As a result, training for colonoscopists is challenging and skill assessment currently relies on subjective scoring by expert proctors. There is a need to provide tools for skill assessment and aid with training new inte…
Wirelessly actuated miniature soft robots actuated by magnetic fields that can overcome gravity by climbing soft and wet tissues are promising for accessing challenging enclosed and confined spaces with minimal invasion for targeted medical operation. However, existing designs lack the directional s
Continuum manipulators are flexible robots which undergo continuous deformation as they are actuated. To describe the elastic deformation of such robots, kinematic models have been developed and successfully applied to a large variety of designs and to various levels of constitutive stiffness. Indep
Gastric cancer is the third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with most new cases occurring in low and middle income countries, where access to screening programs is hindered by the high cost of conventional endoscopy. The waterjet-actuated HydroJet endoscopic platform was developed as a low
In the present work we discuss a novel dynamic control approach for magnetically actuated robots, by proposing an <i>adaptive control</i> technique, robust towards parametric uncertainties and unknown bounded disturbances. The former generally arise due to partial knowledge of the robots' dynamic pa
In this paper, explicit model predictive control is applied in conjunction with nonlinear optimisation to a magnetically actuated flexible endoscope for the first time. The approach is aimed at computing the motion of the external permanent magnet, given the desired forces and torques. The strategy
The present letter investigates a novel control approach for magnetically driven soft-tethered capsules for colonoscopy-a potentially painless approach for colon inspection. The focus of this work is on a class of devices composed of a magnetic capsule endoscope actuated by a single external permane
Traditional endoscopes consist of a flexible body and a steerable tip with therapeutic capability. Although prior endoscopes have relied on operator pushing for actuation, recent robotic concepts have relied on the application of a tip force for guidance. In such case, the body of the endoscope can
Retroflexion during colonoscopy is typically only practiced in the wider proximal and distal ends of the large intestine owing to the stiff nature of the colonoscope. This inability to examine the proximal side of the majority of colon folds contributes to today's suboptimal colorectal cancer detect
Magnetic field gradients have repeatedly been shown to be the most feasible mechanism for gastrointestinal capsule endoscope actuation. An inverse quartic magnetic force varia- tion with distance results in large force gradients induced by small movements of a driving magnet; this necessitates robot…
In this paper, we demonstrate velocity-level closed-loop control of a tethered magnetic capsule endoscope that is actuated via serial manipulator with a permanent magnet at its end-effector. Closed-loop control (2 degrees-of-freedom in position, and 2 in orientation) is made possible with the use of…