A novel gastroscope intervention mechanism with circumferentially pneumatic-driven clamping function

Robotic assisted gastroscope delivery could solve various problems like understaffing, radiation and infection risk. The friction rollers commonly used in the few existed systems for traditional flexible endoscope, however, has potential risk of destroying scopes for non-uniform clamping. This research develops a novel gastroscope intervention mechanism (GIM) with a specially designed airbag. It evenly clamps the gastroscope with circumferential uniform pneumatic pressure. The GIM realizes axial and radial motion by means of the relay delivery mode similar to clinician's operation. The critical slipping force at different air pressure was analyzed to provide guidelines for safe intervention. Experiments were performed to evaluate the delivery accuracy and velocity and measure the critical slipping force. The results showed the axial and radial accuracy for delivery are 0.025±0.2mm and -0.03±0.25deg, respectively. The average velocity of 6.00mm·s^-1 and 75 deg·s^-1 were achieved to push/pull and twist the gastroscope. The relationship between the critical slipping force and air pressure could be fitted with a quadratic polynomial.