Toward rapid prototyping of miniature Capsule Robots

Abstract

Abstract-Minimally invasive robotic surgery techniques are becoming popular thanks to their enhanced patient benefits, including shorter recovery time, better cosmetic results and reduced discomforts. Less invasive procedures would be achieved with the use of Medical Capsule Robots (MCRs). These devices are characterized by low power requirements and small dimensions as well as uncompromising safety. MCRs operate wirelessly in abdominal Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) and Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES) or in the Gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The design process of MCRs, however, is expensive and time consuming. A platform for rapid prototyping MCRs is needed so that MCR researchers can reduce development costs and spend more time in studying innovative MCR applications. In this work, we introduce an open source modular platform geared toward rapid prototyping MCRs. To speed up the prototyping process, the MCR is programmed using TinyOS instead of bare-bone C. We present the hardware architecture of the platform, and the motivation for using TinyOS. To show the viability of TinyOS, we present results from an experiment involving sensing, actuation and wireless communication. This work lays the foundation for our future goal of building an integrated design environment for the design, analysis and simulation of MCRs.

External Rapid Prototyping Validation System for the Automotive Development Cycle

“…The big advantage of rapid prototyping, combined with 3-D printing, is that a final product is developed and built faster, it is easy to customize it and can be shared with other developers in the field in an open source approach. Other application domains of rapid prototyping method are wireless sensor networks, internet of things, FPGAs [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], as well as medicine [17,18], robotic systems [19] and power electronics [20].…”

Component based design of a drug delivery capsule robot

“…Instead, a higher level of abstraction is needed to connect the users' intentions to actual TinyOS components. To this end, we have added blocks to our previous [8] meta language definition of TinyOS to support a higher level of abstraction. Blocks are WebGME components that expose customizable inputs, outputs, and parameters to users.…”

“…In our previous works, we presented our contributions towards the creation of an environment for the rapid design and development of MCRs [7,8,9]. The basic elements of the integrated design environment are shown in Fig.…”

STORMLab for STEM Education: An Affordable Modular Robotic Kit for Integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education

“…These activities can be integrated in core subjects of STEM curricula, such as Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, and Math. The eSMAC robotic kit is the educational version of the SMAC design environment [16,17], which is aiming to lower the barriers for design space exploration in the field of medical capsule robots by providing an open source library of hardware and software functional modules.…”