Octopus Surgeon

A mechanical tentacle will help surgeons in performing operations

Ivan Zagorsky, Vesti

Octopuses have long surprised people with their extraordinary dexterity, with which they penetrate into small holes and get food with their tentacles from the most inaccessible corners. It is not surprising that engineers often consider the "hands" of cephalopods as a prototype of robotic manipulators.

For ten years, the US Department of Defense has funded work to create an entire octopus robot capable of moving underwater, gently grabbing and moving objects. Due to various circumstances, the octobot was never built, but scientists from different countries who worked on this project used some of the developments for their own research.

For example, a team from the Italian Institute of Biorobotics (L'Istituto BioRobotics) has created a mechanical tentacle with which you can gently lift and hold internal organs during surgery. The soft and elastic manipulator can stretch and bend, but if necessary it becomes hard and retains its shape.

The device consists of two adjacent elastomer modules, inside each of which three cylindrical chambers are placed. By pumping the chambers with air in a certain order, it is possible to bend and stretch the modules in any direction. In order for the soft hand to become hard in an instant, the researchers placed a granular filler inside the outer shell. When the air is pumped out, the granules are compressed, and the outer membrane becomes rigid. It's like coffee in a vacuum package that seems solid until the shell is broken.

"The human body is a very complex and unstructured environment, where the capabilities of the octopus can provide some advantage over traditional surgical instruments," says Octopus arm inspires future surgical tool lead author of the study Tommaso Ranzani (Tommaso Ranzani) in a press release. – As a rule, an octopus does not have rigid structures and, thanks to this, it adapts the shape of its body to the environment. Without rigid skeletal support, eight very flexible and long arms can twist, change length and bend in any direction at any point."

During the tests, the manipulator was bent at an angle of up to 255 degrees, stretched by 62% of its original length and increased stiffness from 60% to 200%. To demonstrate the device's capabilities during a surgical operation, the researchers captured and moved water-filled balloons.

"Surgical tasks often require the simultaneous use of several specialized tools, such as grapples, wound expanders, dissectors and vision systems," explains Ranzani. "We believe that our device is the first step towards creating a tool that is capable of performing all these tasks, as well as reaching remote areas of the body and safely supporting organs around the surgery site."

More information about the manipulator's work can be found in the article published in the publication Bioinspiration and Biomimetics (Ranzani et al., A bioinspired soft manipulator for minimally invasive surgery, in the public domain).

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru20.05.2015