Electrolytic Silicone Bourdon Tube Microactuator for Reconfigurable Surgical Robots

Many compelling future surgical applications will be enabled by a new kind of surgical tool, capable of entering the human body through natural orifices or very small incisions and then reconfiguring into complex kinematic structures at the site of intervention. We describe a first step toward this goal - the development of a microactuator designed for use in surgical robots that are composed of large quantities of reconfigurable micro-robotic modules. The miniaturizable design proposed harnesses the Bourdon effect to convert electrolytic pressure into mechanical motion obtaining more than 400% displacement variation while consuming less than 0.5 W at less than 5 V. We describe the design, construction, and experimental results with our prototype microactuator.