During the last years, the Minimally Invasive Surgery ( MIS ) is becoming more common thanks to the reduction of the patient’s trauma and the recovery duration due to less incision made during a surgery.
A common MIS is endoscopy that normally requires an assistant to hold and control the endoscope camera, such that the assistant will move the camera while the surgeon performs the surgical operation. A head motion-controlled endoscope will allow the surgeon to control the camera and the endoscope bending using his/her head motion.
The aim of our project will be to improve the dexterity of the rigid instruments and to overcome the ‘difficulty to free both hands for operating’ and the visualization, due to a lack of image quality and a lack of 3D and depth perception.
To overcome these barriers, we plan to use a soft robotics endoscope, firstly the pneumatic module developed at RaM, controlled by a motor air pressure with four chambers. In order to interface this system with other sensors like the Inertial Motion Unit ( IMU ) to free surgeon’s hands during operation, it will be necessary to implement a new framework for the endoscope, done with Robot Operating System ( ROS ) and to realize a endoscope tip motion control with an IMU. Furthermore, to overcome the visualization problem, it could be developed, equipping the soft endoscopic module with a camera, a system which shows us the output video using the Microsoft Hololens.