Investigation of bio-inspired gecko fibers to improve adhesion of HeartLander surgical robot - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University

Investigation of bio-inspired gecko fibers to improve adhesion of HeartLander surgical robot

G. Tortora, P. Glass, N. Wood, B. Aksak, A. Menciassi, M. Sitti, and C. N. Riviere
Conference Paper, Proceedings of 34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC '12), pp. 908 - 911, August, 2012

Abstract

HeartLander is a medical robot proposed for minimally invasive epicardial intervention on the beating heart. To date, all prototypes have used suction to gain traction on the epicardium. Gecko-foot-inspired micro-fibers have been proposed for repeatable adhesion to surfaces. In this paper, a method for improving the traction of HeartLander on biological tissue is presented. The method involves integration of gecko-inspired fibrillar adhesives on the inner surfaces of the suction chambers of HeartLander. Experiments have been carried out on muscle tissue ex vivo assessing the traction performance of the modified HeartLander with bio-inspired adhesive. The adhesive fibers are found to improve traction on muscle tissue by 57.3%.

BibTeX

@conference{Tortora-2012-120607,
author = {G. Tortora and P. Glass and N. Wood and B. Aksak and A. Menciassi and M. Sitti and C. N. Riviere},
title = {Investigation of bio-inspired gecko fibers to improve adhesion of HeartLander surgical robot},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC '12)},
year = {2012},
month = {August},
pages = {908 - 911},
}