Clamping Tools of a Capsule for Monitoring the Gastrointestinal Tract Problem Analysis and Preliminary Technological Activity

This paper describes the development of an active clamping mechanism to be integrated into a swallowable pill for the diagnosis of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The clamping system allows to stop the pill in desired sites of the GI tract for long monitoring purposes. After discussing the major technical constraints, the design of the clamping system, based on FEA (Finite Element Analysis), is illustrated as well as its fabrication process. The clamping unit is actuated exploiting Shape Memory Alloys (SMA), in wires and spring configuration, and it is driven by a dedicated electrical interface. A fine tuning has been performed in order to limit the power consumption. Then a working prototype is fabricated and preliminarily tested, pointing out a capability of the grasping system over 40 g.