Design of a unified active locomotion mechanism for a capsule-shaped laparoscopic camera system

This paper proposes a unified active locomotion mechanism for a capsule-shaped laparoscopic surgical camera system. The proposed design integrates the camera´s fixation and manipulation together by adjusting a 3D rotational magnetic field from a stator outside a patient´s body. The stator generates both torque to rotate the inside rotor dome in all three dimensions, and force to serve as an anchoring system that keeps the camera steady during a surgical procedure. This design eliminates the need for an articulated design and therefore the integrated motors to significantly reduce the size of the camera. A set of stator and rotor designs are developed and evaluated by simulations and experiments.