Self-Driving 3-legged Crawling Prototype Capsule Robot with Orientation Controlled by External Magnetic Field

This paper presents a novel method to control endoscopy capsule robots by combining two innovated control system aiming to provide locomotion and orientation control to the capsule robot, by using three symmetric magnetic legs in a crawling cycle, the capsule will be able to journey its way through the digestive system in opposite to the traditional journey that depends on the digestive movement and speed, a prototype was made with an innovated switching mechanism which reduces the number of driving motors into one motors as well as reducing the complexity of the design removing the need for any gear systems, the capsule legs are able to expand allowing for 200% reach which will help hold the capsule in place while performing a task such as capturing a much needed clear footage, in opposite to traditional endoscopic capsules which the constant motion in the gastrointestinal tract negatively affects the quality of the footage retrieved, the tested prototype have achieved a translation cycle of 24 millimeter every 10.2 seconds which is equal to 141 millimeter per minute. The capsule integrates a magnetic control system to reorient the capsule, the system works by implementing a neodymium magnet inside the capsule robot, making it susceptible to a pre-generated external magnetic field, a magnetic model was designed utilizing four external magnets and an inner magnet, with more than 10 centimeters distance between the two sets of magnets, the stress on the inner magnet surface due to the driving magnets has reached a magnitude of 35 kilo pascals which is very efficient to reorient the capsule.