Helical optical fiber sensing configuration for hyper-elastic soft surgical manipulators

Abstract

Soft surgical manipulator is a research hotspot, but the sensing problem of hyper-elastic deformation needs to be solved urgently. In order to solve this problem, a helical optical fiber sensing method is proposed for the manipulator of hyper-elastic soft material. A FBG(Fiber Bragg Grating) sensor is embedded in a helical shape in the soft manipulator. In theory, the helical fiber sensing model is established. The reflectance spectra of the FBG sensor was measured when the soft manipulator was compressed or bent. The relationship between the center wavelength offset and the compression amount, the center wavelength offset and the bending angle, respectively, was analyzed. The results show that the compression of the soft manipulator is approximately liner to the shift of the center wavelength of the FBG in the range of 0–18 mm, and the bending angle of the soft manipulator is non-linear to the shift of the center wavelength of the FBG sensor. The helical fiber grating sensor has good consistency in many measurement experiments, and the fluctuation range of the deviation index is -35%-25%. The main idea of the thesis is feasible and provide a method of the posture sensing of the soft surgery manipulator.