Abstract
The number of large intestine cancer patients has been increasing continually. An endoscope is used in diagnosis and also in treatment of the diseased part of the intestine. A large intestine endoscope is used mainly for the inspection of large intestine cancers. However, many doctors are experiencing issues in handling the endoscope. Thus robotic application is anticipated that would assist in inserting the endoscope and remove slack of the intestine. We propose a robot that mimics the peristaltic crawling of earthworms and uses artificial rubber muscle as an actuator. In this paper, we perform four experiments: 1) Determining the relationship between contraction/expansion rate and inner pressure of the artificial muscle; 2) forward movement test in an acrylic tube; 3) determining the robot's ability to pull an acrylic tube and 4) forward and pulling movement test in a large intestine model. Satisfactory performances were obtained from the experiments.
