Abstract
This paper presents a multi-purpose gripping and incision tool-set to reduce the number of required manipulators for targeted therapeutics delivery in Minimally Invasive Surgery. We have recently proposed the use of multi-arm Concentric Tube Robots (CTR) consisting of an incision, a camera, and a gripper manipulator for deep orbital interventions, with a focus on Optic Nerve Sheath Fenestration (ONSF). The proposed prototype in this research, called Gripe-Needle, is a needle equipped with a sticky suction cup gripper capable of performing both gripping of target tissue and incision tasks in the optic nerve area by exploiting the multi-tube arrangement of a CTR for actuation of the different tool-set units. As a result, there will be no need for an independent gripper arm for an incision task. The CTR innermost tube is equipped with a needle, providing the pathway for drug delivery, and the immediate outer tube is attached to the suction cup, providing the suction pathway. Based on experiments on various materials, we observed that adding a sticky surface with bio-inspired grooves to a normal suction cup gripper has many advantages such as, 1) enhanced adhesion through material stickiness and by air-tightening the contact surface, 2) maintained adhesion despite internal pressure variations, e.g. due to the needle motion, and 3) sliding resistance. Simple Finite Element and theoretical modeling frameworks are proposed, based on which a miniature tool-set is designed to achieve the required gripping forces during ONSF. The final designs were successfully tested for accessing the optic nerve of a realistic eye phantom in a skull eye orbit, robust gripping and incision on units of a plastic bubble wrap sample, and manipulating different tissue types of porcine eye samples.
Highlights
The challenge of actuating miniature forms of suction, especially in surgical settings has long been a researched topic
We have recently proposed accessing the eye orbit and the optic nerve by following the eye surface using a multiple Concentric Tube Robot (CTR) arms to collaboratively perform the intervention (Mitros et al, 2020)
We propose Gripe-Needle, a miniature suction cup gripper attached to the needle CTR arm to provide the gripping and incision functionalities at once
Summary
The challenge of actuating miniature forms of suction, especially in surgical settings has long been a researched topic. It is challenging to achieve viable solutions to adhere at such miniature scales whilst being able to incorporate interventional tools in a minimally invasive surgery setting. We propose a solution with a specific focus on the mechanical requirements of ONSF. We proposed a two-tube CTR equipped with a novel sticky suction cup gripper that houses a needle for therapeutics delivery in deep eye orbit. Inspirations from the octopus suckers have been sought to enhance the design robustness and adhesion capabilities
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