Development of an Earthworm-Based Intestinal Soft Robot Equipped with a Gripper

Abstract

An endoscopy is a tool that is used to examine the interior of a hollow organ or cavity of the body by inserting directly into the organ. However, intestinal endoscopy is not friendly to patients due to discomfort, and it can easily cause intestinal damage or even perforation due to the use of the rigid materials of the endoscopy. Here, we provide an earthworm-based intestinal soft robot equipped with a gripper for application on intestinal exams or surgery. The intestinal soft robot is composed of a frontal radial actuator, a central axial actuator, a rear radial actuator and a gripper. The first three actuators drive the robot to move freely in some specific pipes by altering its own deformation, and the gripper, fixed at the end of the frontal radial actuator, is used to pick up “foreign bodies” into and out of the pipes for the purpose of intestinal applications. The different experiments validated that the intestinal soft robot could move forward and backward autonomously in a rigid pipe, a flexible pipe, and a mucus-containing pipe and could extract objects from these pipes. The ultimate weight that the intestinal soft robot extracts is up to 220 g, and the maximum moving speed is 12.0 cm/min in the rigid pipe. This intestinal soft robot is non-destructive to the operating environment, providing a friendly and novel method for the application of intestinal diseases.