Design of a vision-guided microrobotic colonoscopy system

In this paper presents a novel design of a microrobotic colonoscopy (MRC) system. The proposed microrobotic colonoscope is an autonomous vision-guided device, which is designed to navigate inside a human colon for the purpose of observation, analysis and diagnosis. It is developed to alleviate the shortcomings in the existing manual colonoscopy procedure, which is generally cumbersome and tedious for the colonoscopist and painful to the patients. The MRC system is divided into three areas, i.e. design of the microrobotic device, path planning and guidance, and offboard control system. A novel design of the microrobot is presented which utilizes a pneumatic mechanism to achieve locomotion and steering. A new concept of clamping the colon wall based on passive vacuum devices is suggested. General mathematical analysis governing the differential steering of the robotic tip is also described. The path planning of the microrobot is carried out based on the sensory fusion utilizing the quantitative parameters derived from the captured images and the tactile sensors. An off-board control system to control the directional movements of the microrobot is explained. The proposed colonoscopy system was tested with physical models and animal colons, and the experimental observations are presented.

[1]  Takeo Kanade,et al.  Geometric camera calibration using systems of linear equations , 1988, Proceedings. 1988 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[2]  Koji Ikuta,et al.  Shape memory alloy servo actuator system with electric resistance feedback and application for active endoscope , 1988, Proceedings. 1988 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[3]  R. Manmatha,et al.  Issues in extracting motion parameters and depth from approximate translational motion , 1988, [1989] Proceedings. Workshop on Visual Motion.

[4]  Toshio Fukuda,et al.  Rubber gas actuator driven by hydrogen storage alloy for in-pipe inspection mobile robot with flexible structure , 1989, Proceedings, 1989 International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[5]  P. Dario,et al.  A miniature device for medical intracavitary intervention , 1991, [1991] Proceedings. IEEE Micro Electro Mechanical Systems.

[6]  Kazuhiro Kosuge,et al.  Micro active catheter system with multi degrees of freedom , 1994, Proceedings of the 1994 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[7]  Joel W. Burdick,et al.  The development of a robotic endoscope , 1995, Proceedings 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human Robot Interaction and Cooperative Robots.

[8]  Maria Chiara Carrozza,et al.  A microrobot for colonoscopy , 1996, MHS'96 Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on Micro Machine and Human Science.

[9]  Maria Chiara Carrozza,et al.  A microrobotic system for colonoscopy , 1997, Proceedings of International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[10]  Vijayan K. Asari,et al.  A new approach for nonlinear distortion correction in endoscopic images based on least squares estimation , 1999, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.