Design and Fabrication of Transformable Head Structures for Endoscopic Catheters
Seong-il Kwon, Sara Van Kalker, Sung Hwa Choi, Keri Kim, Kyung Su Park, Sungchul Kang, Chunwoo Kim, Seok Chang Ryu
Abstract
We present a transformable catheter head structure for endoscopic catheter allowing the simultaneous use of a camera module and a large tool channel introduced through a small incision. At the site of interest, the head with a camera can be expanded from the initial straight configuration, which opens a window for advancing a tool that is located behind the camera. Two different designs were proposed and prototyped. One option has flexure joints directly fabricated at the distal end of a polymer catheter by laser micro-machining, while another design employs a hinged metal head assembled at the tip of the same type of catheter. The kinematic behavior of each head was evaluated during the head-up and tip steering motions, and compared with each other to draw a selection guideline between them. Experimental results prove the feasibility of the proposed head structure for smarter endoscopic catheters.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2019_designandfabrica,
title = {Design and Fabrication of Transformable Head Structures for Endoscopic Catheters},
author = {Seong-il Kwon and Sara Van Kalker and Sung Hwa Choi and Keri Kim and Kyung Su Park and Sungchul Kang and Chunwoo Kim and Seok Chang Ryu},
booktitle = {ICRA 2019},
year = {2019}
}