Snake-Like Robots for Minimally Invasive, Single-Port, and Intraluminal Surgeries

Abstract

The surgical paradigm of Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has been a key driver to the adoption of robotic surgical assistance. Progress in the last three decades has led to a gradual transition from manual laparoscopic surgery with rigid instruments to robot-assisted surgery. In the last decade, the increasing demand for new surgical paradigms to enable access into the anatomy without skin incision (intraluminal surgery) or with a single skin incision (Single Port Access surgery -SPA) has led researchers to investigate snake-like flexible surgical devices. In this chapter, we first present an overview of the background, motivation, and taxonomy of MIS and its newer derivatives. Challenges of MIS and its newer derivatives (SPA and intraluminal surgery) are outlined along with the architectures of new snake-like robots meeting these challenges. We also examine the commercial and research surgical platforms developed over the years, to address the specific functional requirements and constraints imposed by operations in confined spaces. The chapter concludes with an evaluation of open problems in surgical robotics for intraluminal and SPA, and a look at future trends in surgical robot design that could potentially address these unmet needs.

Sensorless Estimation of the Planar Distal Shape of a Tip-Actuated Endoscope

“…(8) was then solved for eachg c i to write a nonlinear statetransition expression as shown in Eq. (9). Here, w m indicates the applied magnetic wrench that is estimated via the dipole model; this is possible owing to localization feedback of IM pose and kinematic feedback of the serial manipulator that is used to obtain EM pose.…”

“…The modelling of continuum devices has been thoroughly investigated where kinematic or mechanics-based computations rely on computing the configuration of a device given a known robot base, e.g. physical point where robot is at least partially constrained, and applied loads [9]- [12]. Similar methods have been applied for continuum devices that rely on magnetic fields for actuation [5], [6], [13].…”

Medical Technologies and Challenges of Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Intervention and Diagnostics

“…In this section, we briefly present an overview of the mechanical architectures used to the extent needed to outline their associated modeling and control challenges. A more detailed review of these robotic architectures can be found in [25]. High dexterity snake-like robot architectures are typical in systems designed for NOTES and SPA.…”

Dual-Continuum Design Approach for Intuitive and Low-Cost Upper Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

“…Continuum robots, defined as actuated structures whose constitutive materials form curves with continuous tangent vectors, have found numerous applications within surgical procedures [14], [15]. Examples include concentric tube robots/active cannulas [16], [17] and multi-backbone continuum robots [18], [19] for trans-oral upper airway surgery [20], single port access surgery [21], [22], minimally invasive surgery (MIS) [23], and arthroscopy [24].…”