Pneumatic Actuator Based Tracheal Intubation System

For first-aided surgery, tracheal intubation is an important step to keep patients breathing. In order to solve problems of traditional intubation instrument, such as non-portable, expertise requirement and secondary injury caused by rigid structure, a kind of pneumatic actuator based tracheal intubation system is proposed in this paper. The instrument hardware includes tongue depressor, feeding mechanism and steering mechanism. Pneumatic actuators made of soft material are applied in the instrument. System's software includes pneumatic controller and teleoperation controller. Medical experts can control the intubation system to operate first-aided intubation surgery remotely, helping to reduce mortality of asphyxia patients. The results of simulation and manikin experiments show that the tracheal intubation system meets the requirements of first-aided intubation surgery.