Micro Colon Robot System For Diagnosis And Treatment And Its Experimental Study

Nowadays, the number of inland people who fall ill with Colorectal cancer increases at the rate of 4.71% per year, which is outnumber of 2%, the international average level. As the high recovery rate for early colorectal cancer, it is pivotal to examine seasonally and regularly. To diagnose the cancer, the endoscopy and biopsy for pathological examination is needed. Fiber colonoscopy or electronic colonoscopy is normol at present. However, it causes the patients misery and complication more or less. So the research of minimally invasive or noinvasive colon robot for diagnosis and treatment become the hottest topics.Alimentary canal is the only natural openings, which provides a perfect environment for the study of micro colon robots. Recently the research of colon diagnostic robot has been opened up in several research institutes with the ultimate goal of using for clinical application. The developed robot were small-size, autonomous control and a kind of collection of diagnostic and cure. Many researches are fixed on the robot's drive mode and locomotion, few on the diagnostic and treatment mechanism.This paper is support by the National 863 Program (2008AA04Z201),the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31170968),Manned spaceflight research project in advance (010203) and Shanghai science project (09DZ1907400). Analysis and summarize the previous study, describes the development of a prototype robotic endoscope for colon diagnosis and therapy. The goal of this device is to access, in a minimally invasive fashion, the portions of the small intestine that can't be accessed by conventional endoscopes. This paper describes the macroscopic design and function of the device, and the results of experiments that validate the robot.The micro DC motor is choosing as the robot's drive. Auto-movement in the colon is inchworm-like locomotion. The visual navigation, biopsy and hyperthermia therapy are added to the robot as needed. The function of the visual navigation is outputting the video of inner colon, which contains the information that the doctor needs to diagnosis the tumor. The biopsy means collecting some suspected cells for diagnosing. Hyperthermia is a safe and effective method to treat early cancer.Pic16F690 is choosing as the master control chip of the robot. The drive circuit for the DC motors, the collection circuit for the current of motors, the collection circuit for the coil's temperature and the communication circuit are designed for the robot. The programmers for locomotion control,temperature control and RF communication protocol is designed in C language. There are two ways for the robot power supply: dragging wire and wireless power supply. The upper computer sends the control command to the robot which could be semiautonomous controlled.Finally, the diameter of the robot is 20mm, and 170mm in length. To verify the micro robot's function, design a series experiment of serial modules of the robot and robot itself, which demonstrate the robot have the able to move forward and backward and stop at the expected location. The step pitch of the robot is 32.8mm.