Low-Cost Technologies for Flexible Endoscopy: Design, Control and Autonomy for a Water-Jet Actuated Soft Continuum Endoscope

Despite the outstanding diagnostic performance brought by new technologies in medicine, cancer remains a significant burden worldwide. In addition to prevention strategies, the ability to detect malignancy early is crucial in enabling effective treatment and dramatically increasing the survival rate of patients. In the case of gastric cancer, diagnosis is generally performed using Flexible Endoscopy (or Endoscope) (FE). The FE has been proven to be a powerful, reliable and cost-effective tool in the fight against gastric cancer. However, its effectiveness strongly depends on the skills of trained Gastro Enterologists (GE) who perform the procedures. Moreover, accessibility and availability of such tools are often limited to people residing in major cities, while remote and rural areas remain poorly served by their health systems.
The advent of robotics in medicine offers a new solution to these problems. When possible, automating diagnostic procedures or surgical tasks has the potential to deliver reliable, repeatable and cost-effective alternatives to standard human-in-the-loop procedures. Embedding autonomous capabilities into a machine, optimally designed to execute a specific task, could enable the device to automatically adapt to different conditions and non-skilled personnel to perform the procedure by supervising the actions of the robotic platform. In these scenarios, safety represents a major concern and in the majority of the cases, a safe interaction between the robot and the tissues can be guaranteed by building compliant robots made of soft materials. However, if the possibility of using compliant devices offers a number of advantages to the final user or patient, it defines a series of technical challenges that have to be addressed to deliver a stable and reliable control of the platform. Finally, by adopting low-cost designs, single-use solutions can be realised to address the issue and complication of sterilisation. This dissertation discusses the research effort targeted at the development of a water-jet actuated low-cost, disposable gastroscopy platform to offer a safe, cost-effective, fault-free alternative to standard FE.