A novel single hand control unit of colonoscope

With the technology of endoscope advances, colonoscopy has been widely used in clinical diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the colon. The emergence of the electronic colonoscope makes the operation of colonoscopy change from two-man method to one-man method. However, the traditional control unit of colonoscope is not able to meet doctors´ needs of single-hand operations in one-man colonoscopy. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a new approach to redesign human-machine interactive products based on ergonomics and the axiomatic design theory, which is called time-domain method. With this new method, a redesigned control unit and a redesigned bending control mechanism of the bending section is presented. The redesigned control unit that has all the basic functions is capable of fulfilling one-hand operation needs; it is more efficient and easy to use.