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Development of a leech-inspired peristaltic crawling soft robot for intestine inspection

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Abstract

The development of a non-destructive and patient-friendly method for examining the intestines is crucial for early prevention and timely diagnosis of prevalent intestinal diseases that pose a threat to human health worldwide. Although the soft robot shows promise as an examination method due to its safe human-machine interaction and high maneuverability, achieving controlled and non-damaging movements within the flexible and delicate structure of the intestines remains a significant challenge. In this study, we propose and design a leech-inspired soft robot capable of operating in an intestine-like environment while ensuring lossless and controllable functionality. The soft robot consists of two dual-chambered adsorption actuators serving as “feet” and a retractable actuator as the body, enabling the robot to crawl by programmatically controlling the alternating movements of the adsorption actuators and the cooperation of the retractable actuator. Through numerical simulations, and movement tests in various scenarios such as planes, slopes, and intestine-like pipelines, we verified the adsorption characteristics and regulation mechanism of the adsorption actuator, as well as the movement performance of the robot. The results demonstrate that the adsorption actuator achieves a maximum adsorption force of 3.17 N, and the soft robot attains a maximum moving speed of 9.29 mm/s. This research offers a non-destructive and patient-friendly approach that holds promise for the detection and treatment of intestinal diseases in practical applications.

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Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61,903,157).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Advanced Process Control for Light Industry, Ministry of Education, Institute of Automation, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, P. R. China

    Gongxin Li, Mindong Wang, Yazhou Zhu & Yadong Wang

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  1. Gongxin Li
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  2. Mindong Wang
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  3. Yazhou Zhu
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  4. Yadong Wang
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Contributions

G. L. and M.W. conceived the idea and designed the experiments. M. W, Y. Z. and Y.W. performed all the experiments. The manuscript was written by G. L. and M.W. All authors contributed to the general discussion and reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Gongxin Li.

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Li, G., Wang, M., Zhu, Y. et al. Development of a leech-inspired peristaltic crawling soft robot for intestine inspection. Int J Intell Robot Appl (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41315-024-00358-7

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