A Soft and Controllable Stiffness Manipulator for Minimally Invasive Surgery: Preliminary characterization of the modular design

Citation:

I. D. Falco, M. Cianchetti, and A. Menciassi, “A Soft and Controllable Stiffness Manipulator for Minimally Invasive Surgery: Preliminary characterization of the modular design,” IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2014.

Abstract:

This paper presents a soft modular manipulator for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). The robot takes inspiration from the capabilities of the biological octopus arm. Flexible fluidic actuators allow omni-directional bending and elongation, while a granular jamming mechanism permits to control the arm stiffness up to a Young Modulus of 0.91 MPa. The modular design and its stiffness evaluation are reported.

Publisher's Version

Last updated on 09/16/2015