2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Crawling type ultra-thin and flexible actuator capable of propelling inside the blood vessel
Project/Area Number |
16K14194
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
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Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
Research Field |
Intelligent mechanics/Mechanical systems
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Research Institution | Tokyo Institute of Technology |
Principal Investigator |
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Project Period (FY) |
2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
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Keywords | ソフトメカニクス |
Outline of Final Research Achievements |
To realize a self-propelled catheter, we challenged to create a crawl type ultra-thin and flexible actuator that propels the blood vessel while generating a traveling wave.The introduced actuator consists of the inner tube and the Pneumatic artificial muscles:PAMs.Further, in the inner tube, holes having different sizes are provided so that each pressurizing chamber of the PAMs is pressurized at different timing.When fluid pressure is applied inside the inner tube, a propulsive motion is generated while propagating a traveling wave from the head to the root.We have constructed the design method of the proposed actuator, so that it could propel at an outer diameter of 4 mm and a speed of 10 mm / s. We also devised a reverse function and a direction steering function. Experiments confirmed the validity of these proposed methods.
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Free Research Field |
知能機械学・機械システム
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