Colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Despite advancements in screening and treatment, there remains a critical need for more effective and minimally invasive methods to manage complex polyps and early-stage colorectal cancers. This study introduces a novel approach to magnetic tissue manipulation for Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD), leveraging visual feedback to enhance precision and control. We develop and evaluate the proposed system within a ROS Gazebo simulation environment, integrating a small magnetic endoscopic clip affixed to tissue, which is manipulated by an external large magnet mounted on a robotic arm. A key challenge in ESD is achieving adequate tissue exposure for precise cutting, particularly in the confined space of the colon where the endoscope is manually controlled. To address this, our system enables controlled manipulation of the magnetic clip to optimize tissue retraction. The robotic arm, guided by real-time visual feedback, dynamically adjusts the internal clip's orientation. Multiple virtual cameras were used to validate the proposed method. The simulation results demonstrated that the robot arm successfully manipulated the internal magnetic clip to the desired tilt angle within an average of 8.4 seconds (range 5.3 to$\mathbf{1 5. 2 ~ s}$). Our findings suggest that robotic-assisted magnetic tissue manipulation has the potential to improve ESD success rates while reducing procedure time, paving the way for further advancements in minimally invasive endoscopic surgery.

Screw-Propelled Vehicles (SPV's) have been widely used for terrestrial applications such as transportation over mud, snow, and amphibious environments. Similar vehicles have also been applied to industrial processes such as dewatering. Typical designs rely on a large pontoon shaft and relatively small blades to prevent unwanted sinkage or blade damage. These types of vehicles were considered during the design of the first lunar rover, given their success in aqueous and arctic media and simplicity compared to tracked vehicles. Studies have looked at the mobility of SPV's on the surface of granular media but there are not any computational and experimental studies on propulsive buried screws. Understanding the role of screw design and its angular velocity on thrust force is key to the advancement and control of SPV's. This study presents experimental and computational results of a submerged, double-helix Archimedes screw generating propulsive force against a bed of soda-lime glass beads. Thus, this research forms the basis for design of a future miniaturized exploration vehicle for space applications. In our study, we used two different screw designs (5 cm radius, 10 cm length, 63 and 44 degrees helix angle corresponding to 4 cm and 8 cm pitch, respectively) submerged in 2mm glass beads (90% roundness with sizes 1.8 mm to 2.2 mm), For both screws, a similar trend is observed between rotational speed and thrust force. We used EDEM, a Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) software for computational studies of the screw interactions with granular media. There is 5-20% discrepancy between our computational and experimental results. We will discuss possible sources of error and the potential for using DEM as a design tool for SPV's.

Vibration-driven locomotion has been widely used for crawling robot studies. Such robots usually have a vibration motor as the actuator and a fibrillar structure for providing directional friction on the substrate. However, there has not been any studies about the effect of fiber structure on robot crawling performance. In this paper, we develop Fiberbot, a custom made mini vibration robot, for studying the effect of fiber angle on robot velocity, steering, and climbing performance. It is known that the friction force with and against fibers depends on the fiber angle. Thus, we first present a new fabrication method for making millimeter scale fibers at a wide range of angles. We then show that using 30° angle fibers that have the highest friction anisotropy (ratio of backward to forward friction force) among the other fibers we fabricated in this study, Fiberbot speed on glass increases to 13.8±0.4 cm/s (compared to ν = 0.6±0.1 cm/s using vertical fibers). We also demonstrate that the locomotion direction of Fiberbot depends on the tilting direction of fibers and we can steer the robot by rotating the fiber pad. Fiberbot could also climb on glass at inclinations of up to 10° when equipped with fibers of high friction anisotropy. We show that adding a rigid tail to the robot it can climb on glass at 25° inclines. Moreover, the robot is able to crawl on rough surfaces such as wood (ν = 10.0±0.2 cm/s using 30° fiber pad). Fiberbot, a low-cost vibration robot equipped with a custom-designed fiber pad with steering and climbing capabilities could be used for studies on collective behavior on a wide range of topographies as well as search and exploratory missions.