A Novel Bioinspired Whisker Sensor for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

Conventional gastrointestinal endoscopy often induces considerable discomfort to patients, and there are bleeding and perforation risks due to a lack of force information on the endoscope. This article develops a bioinspired fiber Bragg grating (FBG) whisker sensor to detect interaction forces during endoscopy. The proposed sensor is inspired by the whisker function of mice, which can detect and sense radial contact forces. It has six whisker sensing units connected by optical fibers with dual FBGs. The whisker sensor has low stiffness and can be snapped onto a commercial endoscope. Experimental results demonstrate that the sensor can achieve a resolution of 1.61 mN for radial forces. The dynamic force and friction evaluations indicate that the sensor has stable sensing performance and robust friction resistance ability. Temperature compensation experiments show that the whisker sensor can provide accurate measurements within the range of 30 °C −48 °C. The performance of the sensor is further validated by ex vivo and in vivo animal trials with swine and demonstrating the potential clinical value of the system.