An endoluminal robotic platform for Minimally Invasive Surgery

During past years, Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES) has been introduced in the medical scenario, leading to the miniaturization of robotic systems and harboring the concept of inserting functional units into the human body for performing surgery. An innovative endoluminal robotic platform for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), and more specifically for NOTES, has been developed and tested. The platform is composed of a miniaturized camera robot coupled with an anchoring frame conceived to assure adequate robotic stability inside the abdominal cavity during surgical tasks. The anchoring frame consists of a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuated magnetic frame attached to the abdominal wall by means of permanent magnets. A dedicated docking mechanism has been integrated in order to assure positioning and anchoring of robotic modules. All platform elements have been specifically designed for NOTES applications: the magnetic frame and the robotic camera module have a diameter of 14 mm and 12 mm respectively. In this work, the endoluminal platform has been illustrated and its potentialities demonstrated in in-vitro conditions on a human phantom.