Abstract
Medical technologies are rapidly been developed in late years. However the effective treatment for colon cancer has not yet been established. A colonoscope with few burdens on a patient is expected from both doctors and patients. We pay out attention to a pneumatic soft actuator and are going to apply it to colonoscopes because it is safe and flexible. We designed a new actuator, called "Fiber reinforced Cylindrical Rubber Actuator (henceforth, FCRA)" and manufactured a 3 DOF bending model by combining the three FCRAs. The FCRA is cheap, can be easily manufactured. In addition, it is safe because it is driven by air pressure. We conducted various experiments in which extension of FCRA and curve angles of the proposed model were measured to evaluate whether they have enough movement performance as colonoscopes.
