The increasing frequency of robot interactions with humans and complex environments motivates the design and control of soft robotic systems made of compliant structures. Additive manufacturing processes enable the creation of new robotic systems and mechanisms that gain their compliance extrinsically through their design, rather than simply their material. With the ability to rapidly and affordably manufacture such mechanisms, the interest in producing custom task-specific underactuated mechanisms has grown. These mechanisms may be useful for highly repetitive tasks or complex situations where the simplicity of control outweighs the versatility of a more traditional robotic system. In the course of this work, new underactuated monolithic soft robotic mechanisms are presented along with automated design processes. The structures can reach multiple arbitrary end effector poses and are controlled with as few actuators as possible. Two methods for the automated design of such structures via inverse kinematics and two concepts for the mechanical realization are presented. Several functional models were created to illustrate possible application scenarios and validate the mechanical concepts. A novel contact surface was also developed and shown to improve the accuracy performance of these structures. These automated design methods contribute toward the general accessibility and usability of multi-pose underactuated extrinsically soft mechanisms.

The particularly compliant and adaptable properties of soft robotic systems and structures offer enormous potential for use in unpredictable environments as well as for safe and interactive work in human environments. Therefore, new approaches for the design of soft robotic systems are constantly being introduced in this still emerging field of research. Through the use of additive manufacturing methods, it is possible to design systems specifically for an individual task. In this paper we present an approach for an automated design process for monolithic soft robotic structures that can assume pre-defined end poses. The idea thereby is to design simple individualizable systems that are 3D-printable and require a minimum number of actuators. Using the automated design process, we could already generate soft robotic systems for different applications which show promising properties.

Since the minimally invasive surgery has significant benefits for the patient, special equipment and techniques are constantly enhanced in this relatively new surgical field, so that more challenging surgical applications can be achieved. Thereby, the major aim is to enable the surgeon to manipulate instruments inside the human body intuitively, despite restricted access to the operating field and limited workspace. With our spine like overtube system for use with standard endoscopes and standard endoscopic instruments, we provide a system facilitating tissue manipulation with sufficient triangulation. In this paper we describe our 3D-printed manipulator system for minimally invasive applications and its pure mechanical control and actuation concepts. Following our aim of an individualized disposable system, in a first step we demonstrate the feasibility of a 3D-printed surgical robotic system by laboratory experiments and a clinical evaluation on a porcine model.

Bladder cancer constitutes the thirteenth most common cause of cancer death worldwide. Transurethral resection of bladder tumors (TURBT) is the established treatment procedure of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. However, current techniques for this procedure represent several inadequacies such as inaccurate resection of tumors and high recurrence rates due to the lack of dexterity and limited instrumentation. In this paper we proposed a concept to improve the efficiency of this procedure. Starting from the anatomic challenges, the design and fabrication procedure of a double arm surgical manipulator made of nitinol was presented. A new actuation concept was introduced which enables a surgeon to facilitate ten degrees of freedom simultaneously. Finally, in-vitro experiments regarding workspace and functionality were conducted to evaluate the developed system. The workspace experiments showed that the entire surface of the bladder can be reached by the manipulator. We also demonstrated that with the developed system, basic tasks such as pick-and-place and circular path marking can be performed.

The use of flexure hinges offers significant benefits compared to conventional revolute joints, such as the use for compact monolithic designs of flexural structures, no friction losses and reduced assembly and manufacturing costs. The combination of this design concept with additive manufacturing (AM) techniques provides huge potential for kinematics design, because of the ability to manufacture complex kinematic structures in one part with integrated adjustable functional elements, i.e. flexure hinges. Considering that there is sparse knowledge of thin-walled structures fabricated using additive manufacturing in current literature, it is obvious that the design of flexure hinge mechanisms for soft robotic applications is challenging today. Therefore, this paper describes software for simulation of plane flexure hinge structures based on investigations on the material characteristics of laser sintered polyamide, especially fatigue strength. Furthermore, the software enables automated design of these flexural structures (e.g. manipulator structures) as STL files, representing the standard interface to all additive manufacturing technologies.

With the patented method of Navigated Control active surgical instruments can be stopped before they endanger delicate and sensitive tissue such as nerves and vessels. To this end, a stereo camera tracks the positions of instrument and patient, a computer then measures the distance to the patient structure and calculates the allowed output power for the instrument. This clinically approved principle requires different systems to exchange data with hard timing constraints. The German research project OR.NET aimed at enabling interoperability of medical devices with a real-time capable network architecture. In this contribution we show how the Navigated Control principle can be applied to various different devices and how it can be integrated into a real-time medical device network based on that architecture. Distributed Navigated Control has the potential to facilitate the integration process for further active instruments and to enable a highly modular system-of-systems. We successfully implemented Distributed Navigated Control for a surgical drill and for the first time for an ultrasonic aspirator. The respective output power of both devices can be limited via the network simultaneously and with hard timing constraints.