Development of endoscopic robot and experiment in the large intestine of dead swine

This paper describes the development of an endoscopic robot. A number of patients of a colorectal cancer increase. However, colorectal cancer can be cured completely if they are discovered and treated early with a large intestine endoscope. In inspecting the large intestine, doctors use the endoscope because it can supply the air and water, and treat the large intestine. However, because the large intestine is so long and has a slack as the sigmoid colon and transverse colon, doctors must straighten the slack in order to insert the endoscope. Because of this hard operation, patients feel pain and get uncomfortable. In addition, the training is needed about 150 times, even if experienced doctors, it spends one hour for this operation. In this study, in order to solve these problems, we developed endoscopic robot with artificial rubber muscle using peristaltic crawling. Unlike another endoscopic robot, our robot can attach the endoscope. For other function of the endoscope, moving forward automatically and pulling up the slack can be feasible. In this study, we confirmed that the robot can pull up the sigmoid colon of the large intestine model that is arranged in the human body model. Next, in order to move forward in the large intestine of dead swine, we fabricated new mechanism. Then, we executed two experiments: one is the experiment of moving forward, and other is the experiment of pulling up the intestine. From those experimental results, the moving forward and pulling motion was confirmed.