A locomotive mechanism for a robotic colonoscope

Abstract

As changing the eating habit to low fiber and high fat diet, the pathology in the colon is growing up annually. Therefore, the colonoscopy is generalized in developed countries. But it requires much time for doctors to acquire a dexterous skill to perform an operation and the procedure is painful to the patient. Therefore, some studies on the development of autonomous colonoscope are carried out. In this paper, we propose a new and simple locomotive mechanism that can be propelled by elliptic motion of multi legs. It has several legs that have constant phase difference each other and those legs are disposed along the upper and lower of the body. In order to evaluate the performance of locomotive mechanism, we carried out the simulations of moving characteristics and the experiments in several environment including the colon of a pig.