Laparoscopic surgery has come a long way lately, but it still relies on rigid instruments that slide in and out of the body on linear tracks. This limitation prevents many operations from being conducted in a minimally invasive fashion, requiring surgeons convert to open procedures and to get their hands dirty to move organs and tissues out of the way. An engineering team from Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Italy took inspiration from octopus tentacles to build a device that can bend on demand, perhaps one day resulting in flexible endoscopic surgical tools that can reach anywhere in the body.
The device consists of two parts, each able to flex in any direction thanks to inflatable cylinders positioned inside. There are three cylinders per module that combine their efforts to bend in different directions. The entire device is made from soft materials, but can become stiff and rigid on demand thanks to an internal membrane that is filled with a granular material to which a vacuum is applied.
From the study abstract in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics:
Here a two-module manipulator is presented, with the final aim of demonstrating the enhanced capabilities that such a structure can have in comparison with rigid surgical tools currently employed in MIS. The performances in terms of workspace, stiffening capabilities, and generated forces are characterized through experimental tests. The combination of stiffening capabilities and manipulation tasks is also addressed to confirm the manipulator potential employment in a real surgical scenario.
Study in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics: A bioinspired soft manipulator for minimally invasive surgery…
Source: Institute of Physics…