Flexible endoscopes are still the gold standard in most natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) procedures; however their flexibility (necessary for navigating through the GI tract) limits their capabilities in terms of distal manipulation and stability. We propose a deployable endoscopic add-on aimed at locally counteracting forces applied at the tip of an endoscope. We analyze different designs: a fully soft version and two hybrid soft-folded versions. The hybrid designs exploit either an inextensible structure pressurized by a soft actuator or the stiffness provided by the unfolded “magic cube” origami structure. We focus on the fabrication and experimental characterization of the proposed structures and present some preliminary designs and integration strategies to mount them on top of current flexible endoscopes.

Handheld displays enable flexible spatial exploration of information spaces -- users can physically navigate through three-dimensional space to access information at specific locations. Having users constantly hold the display, however, has several limitations: (1) inaccuracies due to natural hand tremors; (2) fatigue over time; and (3) limited exploration within arm's reach. We investigate autonomous, self-actuated displays that can freely move and hold their position and orientation in space without users having to hold them at all times. We illustrate various stages of such a display's autonomy ranging from manual to fully autonomous, which -- depending on the tasks -- facilitate the interaction. Further, we discuss possible motion control mechanisms for these displays and present several interaction techniques enabled by such displays. Our Hover Pad toolkit enables exploring five degrees of freedom of self-actuated and autonomous displays and the developed control and interaction techniques. We illustrate the utility of our toolkit with five prototype applications, such as a volumetric medical data explorer.