Design of a unified active locomotion mechanism for a wireless laparoscopic camera system

This paper proposes an active locomotion mechanism for a wireless laparoscopic surgical camera. The mechanism consists of a stator with 17 iron-core coils and a rotor with 3 cylindrical permanent magnets inside the camera. Our motor-free design unifies the camera´s fixation and manipulation by adjusting input currents in the stator which generates 3D rotational magnetic fields, and decouples the camera´s locomotion into pan motion and tilt motion. In the simulation studies, our proposed design can conservatively achieve 360° pan motion with a 22.5° resolution, and 127° ~ 164° maximum tilting range for tilt motion which depends on tilt motion working modes and the distance between the rotor and the stator.