Soft Robotics in Medical Applications

Abstract

This paper introduces the author’s recent research focus, “soft mechanism” in medical applications. In recent years, robotic technology has been actively introduced to medical devices, and a number of clinical applications have been commercialized. The soft mechanism let us have advantages on mechanical implementation, such as compactness, cleanness, and lightweight within a highly accurate motion. The paper briefly introduces the background of robotic technology employed in medical applications, and shows examples of medical robots based on the author’s “soft mechanism”.