Design and experiment of a robot towards in vivo Locomotion

Abstract

Nowadays, many studies have been conducted to reduce the risks associated with colonoscopy examination. While most of the in vivo locomotion is achieved by installing the drive part composed of a conical worm gear mechanism at the front of the endoscope, the friction force causes damage to the inner wall of the large intestine. In this report, we design a peristaltic robot towards generating mild in vivo locomotion, which utilizes an expansion mechanism and generates locomotion without harming the intestinal environment via static friction force. A prototype machine is developed and a fundamental experiment is carried out in a simulated environment. Our results show that the expansion mechanism effectively avoids slipping and enables locomotion via static friction force.