Poster W10 - BIOSENTERO: Bioinspired soft enteroscopic robot for facilitating locomotion, steering, and intervention in the deep small intestine

Introduction: Diagnosing and treating small intestinal disorders such as bleeding, inflammatory bowel disease, and tumors pose significant challenges due to limitations on accessing this anatomical compartment. To address these challenges, we present BIOSENTERO, a bioinspired soft enteroscopic robot, to facilitate deep small intestine procedures, which addresses challenges associated with locomotion, steering, and interventions faced by existing soft robotic systems.

Materials and

Methods: the BIOSENTERO features a hollow-cylinder design consisting of a linearly deformable soft pneumatic actuator as the robotic body, two radially expandable soft pneumatic actuators wrapped by Kirigami sleeves as the robotic head and tail, a central hollow channel for housing accessory endoscopic tools, and a control box for navigation purpose.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: The dynamic Kirigami sleeves achieve clinically acceptable friction force on intestinal mucosa with radial expansion, while minimizing tissue distention. A reinforced central channel supports passage of tools to facilitate diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. A control box supports efficient locomotion and steering, achieving autonomous speeds of ~100 mm/min in vitro, ~43 mm/min in ex vivo intestinal tissue, and an assisted speed of ~200 mm/min in pig studies. Through in vivo pig studies, we demonstrate BIOSENTERO's potential for tissue biopsies, localized drug delivery, and real-time visualization in the deep intestinal region, without causing tissue over distention and damage.

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