Thermally Drawn Monolithic Polymer Continuum Robot with Laser Cutting Profile

Continuum robots have the great potential in endoluminal diagnosis and intervention toward narrow and confined workspace. However, fabrication of continuum robots still poses a grant challenge in its miniaturization. To solve this, this paper designs a thermally drawn monolithic polymer continuum robot with laser cutting profile. First, the continuum robot is designed with two degrees of freedom (DOF) for shape deflection, and it consists of four optical fibers with the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor on each for tension sensing as driving cables. Second, its main body is a multi-channel polycarbonate (PC) tube produced by thermal drawing process, and a series of rectangular cutouts are made on it via laser cutting process. By combining these two fabrication processes, the developed continuum robot realizes the integration of the multi-channel structure and the notch feature. Third, a control framework of puller-follower controller using the integrated tension sensing is proposed for teleoperation control. Finally, experimental setup is built for the robot validation, and results show that the repeated positioning accuracy of the robot is 1.08 mm. Moreover, a micro endoscope and a needle are added to the end of the continuum robot, and a phantom study of auripuncture and drug delivery is completed to verify the preliminary feasibility. And the proposed fabrication approach enables the miniaturization and complex structure for the cable-driven continuum robots.