Design and development of a flexible continuum robot for laparoscopic surgery applications
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Καπελιώτης, Μάρκος
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Abstract
The goal of minimally invasive surgery is to interact with tissue deep inside the body while minimizing collateral damage to surrounding tissues. Conventional surgical robots consist of straight rigid shafts and thus cannot assume 3D curves inside the body that could ultimately lead to enhanced safety in interaction with the tissue. To address these shortcomings continuum robots can be utilized. Composed of an elastic structure these robots can bend both due to the forces exerted by their internal actuators as well as the external environment. These characteristics could prove as valuable additions to classical endoscopic surgical robots where rigid robotic tools are traditionally used. In this way we could imagine a robotic system which features both a rigid robot arm and a continuum robotic tool. The main objective in this thesis is to design the continuum section the hybrid robotic structure. The continuum robot section will then be integrated and mounted on a KUKA LWR robot arm. The continuum backbone will be made of a NiTi super elastic structure and will be actuated by cables. The thesis is linked to the EU-project CASCADE (http://www.cascade-fp7.eu) coordinated by KU Leuven.
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Robot assisted surgery, Continuum robot