Development of a half sphere bending soft actuator for flexible bronchoscope movement

Flexible bronchoscope (FOB) is commonly used nowaday for airway observation in lung diagnosis because of its easier, safer, and good tolerant technique. However, during intubation, FOB may lead to get jammed due to unpassed size. In this paper, a novel soft-tip FOB development using soft actuator mechanism is proposed to solve the jamming problem. The study is focused on the design, fabrication, and implementation stages. The FOB design utilized a molding system that was drawn using SolidWorks and printed using 3D printer. The FOB fabrication used the printed mold to create the soft-tip by pouring the silicon rubber and mixing the inner and outer layers into the mold and solidifying them. The FOB initial implementation was performed by using tube and air pressure generator. By fabricating two types of soft actuator, combining twisting as well as bending movement actuator, a half-sphere movement actuator was developed. The result shows that the proposed soft-tip could move close to half-sphere bending motion after standard pressure driving experiment was executed.