A Multi-Module Soft Robotic Arm with Soft End Effector for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Soft robots are designed to interact safely with environment because of its high structural softness, good environmental adapt ability, and strong biocompatibility compared with traditional rigid robots. At present, most of minimally invasive surgery still rely on traditional robotic surgical tool. However, rigid medical devices are easy to cause secondary damage to the human body. Based on the concept of bionics, a minimally invasive surgical flexible manipulator with multiple degrees of freedom was designed in this paper. The multi-module robotic arm consists of three different units, including: bending unit, twisting unit and extending unit. In addition, the fiber line embedded in each module enhances the stiffness of the manipulator. Two flexible clamps are designed and integrated at the end of the manipulator to provide good performance in actual operation. This work reports the design and manufacturing process of the manipulator, the analysis of the moving workspace, and the experimental test results of the soft robotic arm.