Abstract
Endoscopic surgery is one of the minimally invasive surgical procedures. However, this surgery has the low operability problem during operation by using surgical tools. In this paper, we newly propose a microarm for endoscopic surgery inspired by insects or crustaceans such as a crab leg. This microarm is made by PDMS(polydimethylsiloxane) and SU-8(nega photoresist) which are biocompatible materials and have different stiffness characteristics. We use photolithography for the fabrication method to make layers with the micropattern, and the structure of the microarm is fabricated by stacking these layers. By using this approach, we developed wire-driven microarm with the diameter of less than 2 mm. It is important that fabricated microarm is flexible to avoid damages to tissue of internal organ during operation.
