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Published on: November 14, 2015
Development of a continuum manipulator with variable bending length and piecewise stiffness for transoral laryngeal
Wentuo Yang1, Yongfeng Cao1, Shuang Wang1
1Institute of Forming Technology & Equipment, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200030, China.
Purpose:
Continuum manipulators (CMs) show great potential in transoral laryngeal surgery due to their flexibility. However, CMs for transoral surgery face several issues: large size, which reduces practicality; intersegment coupling, which causes undesired deflection; and a lack of versatility that limits their applicability across different patient groups.
Methods:
This work combines a rod-driven proximal segment and a cable-driven distal segment to achieve piecewise stiffness, alleviating the issue of intersegment coupling. A rigid constraint tube is integrated into the proximal segment to diversify its bending behavior. Preliminary experiments are conducted to validate the design concept.
Results:
The proposed CM has an overall diameter of only 6.5 mm. The proximal segment can achieve a 90° bending with various curvatures. At the working configuration, the coupling error between the proximal segment and the distal segment is less than 1 mm. The effectiveness of the proposed CM is successfully validated using a human model.
Conclusion:
The proposed continuum manipulator possesses the desirable characteristics of small size, low coupling, and high versatility, indicating its great potentialities for the diagnosis and treatment of laryngeal lesion.
