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Development of a Variable Stiffness Modulating Mechanism Based on Phase-Change Material and a Temperature Control System

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Abstract

One of the challenges of using an endoscopic robot for natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) is the ability to adjust its joint stiffness. The endoscopic robot joint needs low stiffness to move through paths in the human body without damaging tissues and high stiffness to keep its shape. This paper presents a variable stiffness manipulator for the endoscopic robot in NOTES. The manipulator has a backbone tube that uses a thermoplastic material, polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG), with a temperature effect to change the stiffness. The backbone of the robot is designed with a heating coil, cooling tube, and thermal sensor to adjust the temperature. Analysis and experiments were conducted to evaluate and find the backbone structure with a large range of stiffness modulations, a short heating time, and a short cooling time. This paper also presents a temperature control system that controls the temperature to maintain the stiffness of the robot in real-time. The stiffness characterization, heating time, and cooling time of the robot and the response of the temperature controller, are tested experimentally. The results confirm that the endoscopic robot can be changed and maintained at some stiffness values.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (NRF-2019R1C1C1007091). This research was supported by Korea Electric Power Corporation (R19XO01-27).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Thermal and Fluids Science, Institute for Computational Science, Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Yeongjin Kim

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Incheon National University, Incheon, 22012, Republic of Korea

    Quang Ngoc Le, Hyunho Kim, Sanghun Jeong, Handdeut Chang & Yeongjin Kim

  3. Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, Division of EECS, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

    Hardik J. Pandya

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  1. Quang Ngoc Le
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  2. Hyunho Kim
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  3. Sanghun Jeong
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  4. Handdeut Chang
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Correspondence to Handdeut Chang, Hardik J. Pandya or Yeongjin Kim.

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Le, Q.N., Kim, H., Jeong, S. et al. Development of a Variable Stiffness Modulating Mechanism Based on Phase-Change Material and a Temperature Control System. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 23, 517–531 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-021-00610-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-021-00610-1

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