Development of Peristaltic Crawling Robot with Artificial Rubber Muscles Attached to Large Intestine Endoscope

The number of large intestine cancer patients has been increasing steadily. An endoscope can be used to diagnose as well as to treat the diseased part of the intestine. A large intestine endoscope is used mainly to examine cancer of the large intestine. However, many doctors have problems handling an endoscope. To resolve this issue, there is demand for a robotic application to assist in inserting the endoscope and straightening the slack from the intestine. We propose a robot that imitates the peristaltic crawling of an earthworm and uses an artificial rubber muscle as an actuator. By attaching the robot to an existing endoscope, it will be possible to move the endoscope forward and pull up the intestine simultaneously, while retaining the functions of the existing endoscope. In this paper, we test the forward and pulling movements of a sliding-air-tube robot in a large intestine of model to evaluate its performance. From these experiments, the robot equipped with the endoscope of 11 mm in the diameter can be moved at the speed that satisfies it. Further, air-emit function is added to this robot and its performance in the large intestine of a dead swine is evaluated. Result of accomplishing experiment by using imitation of endoscope of 8 mm, this robot showed that it had the ability to move the endoscope. (c) 2012 Taylor & Francis and The Robotics Society of Japan