Intracorporeal Robotics: From Milliscale to Nanoscale [Hardcover]

A promising long-term evolution of surgery relies on intracorporeal microrobotics. This book reviews the physical and methodological principles, and the scientific challenges to be tackled to design and control such robots. Three orders of magnitude will be considered, justified by the class of problems encountered and solutions implemented to manipulate objects and reach targets within the body: millimetric, sub-millimetric in the 10- 100 micrometer range, then in the 1-10 micrometer range. The most prominent devices and prototypes of the state of the art will be described to illustrate the benefit that can be expected for surgeons and patients. Future developments nanorobotics will also be discussed.

Introduction ix

Chapter 1. Intracorporeal Millirobotics?1

1.1. Introduction 1

1.2. Principles 2

1.2.1. Partially intracorporeal devices with active distal mobilities 2

1.2.2. Intracorporeal manipulators 5

1.2.3. Intracorporeal mobile devices?16

1.3. Scientific issues 20

1.3.1. Modeling 20

1.3.2. Design?24

1.3.3. Actuation and transmission?26

1.3.4. Sensing?30

1.3.5. Control 34

1.4. Examples of devices 37

1.4.1. The robotic platform of the Araknes project?39

1.4.2. A snake-like robot made of concentric super-elastic tubes 44

1.4.3. MICRON: a handheld robotized instrument for ophthalmic surgery 48

1.5. Conclusion?52

Chapter 2. Intracorporeal Microrobotics?55

2.1. Introduction?55

2.2. Novel paradigms for intracorporeal robotics 56

2.2.1. Classification of intracorporeal robots 56

2.2.2. Physical plÃ7