Snake Robots for Surgical Applications: A Review

Abstract

Although substantial advancements have been achieved in robot-assisted surgery, the blueprint to existing snake robotics predominantly focuses on the preliminary structural design, control, and human–robot interfaces, with features which have not been particularly explored in the literature. This paper aims to conduct a review of planning and operation concepts of hyper-redundant serpentine robots for surgical use, as well as any future challenges and solutions for better manipulation. Current researchers in the field of the manufacture and navigation of snake robots have faced issues, such as a low dexterity of the end-effectors around delicate organs, state estimation and the lack of depth perception on two-dimensional screens. A wide range of robots have been analysed, such as the i²Snake robot, inspiring the use of force and position feedback, visual servoing and augmented reality (AR). We present the types of actuation methods, robot kinematics, dynamics, sensing, and prospects of AR integration in snake robots, whilst addressing their shortcomings to facilitate the surgeon’s task. For a smoother gait control, validation and optimization algorithms such as deep learning databases are examined to mitigate redundancy in module linkage backlash and accidental self-collision. In essence, we aim to provide an outlook on robot configurations during motion by enhancing their material compositions within anatomical biocompatibility standards.

A Survey on Snake Robot Locomotion

“…Due to the miniaturized size of the minimally invasive surgical robot, it is not possible to equip the conventional encoders or position sensors. [93] developed a micro-sensing sensor, a fusion of inertial and gravitational sensors for finding the difference of states in two consecutive universal joints of a surgical robot.Along with the knowledge of motion control mathematics and environment, the mechanism/ prototype with which the studies are being validated is equally essential to understand. Hence the next section tries to provide a detailed review of the electro-mechanical aspects of the mechanical design of the snake robot literature.…”

“…Certain snakebots are modular to reconfigure their bodies to perform different tasks and adapt to environmental conditions. [91], [92], [93], [94], [104]. It was Hirose [3] who introduced the first recorded robot (ACM) in 1972, which was 2m long with 20 single joints.…”

Design and Modeling of a Bio-Inspired Compound Continuum Robot for Minimally Invasive Surgery

“…R e is the pose information of the point. The equation that is to be solved for the inverse kinematics can be expressed as Equation (10).…”

“…After the 2000s, with the clarification of the application scenarios of continuum robots, related research has gradually increased. The application in the medical field has greatly promoted the research and development process of continuum robots [10,11]. In the past 10 years, many continuum robots have been proposed; these continuum robots have obvious trade-offs between the size of the center channel and the size of the continuum robot.…”

Hybrid Compliant Musculoskeletal System for Fast Actuation in Robots

“…Responding to these shortcomings, we introduce in this study a nonlinear hybrid compliant mechanism into a snake-inspired musculoskeletal architecture [ 22 ] The aim is to depart from purely soft or rigid actuation to combined rigid–soft interfaces, as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2 . The hybrid compliant mechanism allows us to maintain rotational synchronous motion [ 23 ] at the joints by taking advantage of bidirectional antagonistic stiffness actuation [ 23 ] instead of using rigid bidirectional servo motors or purely soft actuators, which are often seen in biomimetic robots [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Antagonistic variable stiffness actuation was achieved by placing the continuum soft (hyperelastic) materials in opposing directions to the neutral axis position for torque production about the joint (see Supplementary Materials Video S1 ).…”