BIOSENTERO: Bioinspired Soft Enteroscopic Robot for Facilitating Locomotion, Steering, and Intervention in the Deep Small Intestine

Abstract

Diagnosing and treating small intestinal disorders such as bleeding, inflammatory bowel disease, and tumors pose significant challenges due to limitations in accessing this anatomical compartment. To address these challenges, we develop BIOSENTERO, a bioinspired soft enteroscopic robot, to facilitate deep small intestine procedures, which addresses challenges associated with locomotion, steering, and intervention faced by existing soft robotic systems. BIOSENTERO features a hollow-cylinder design consisting of a linearly deformable soft pneumatic actuator as the robotic body, two radially expandable soft pneumatic actuators wrapped with Kirigami sleeves as the robotic head and tail units, a central hollow channel for housing accessory endoscopic tools, and a control box and joystick for navigation. The robot's body is a fiber-reinforced actuator with four inflatable chambers, enabling versatile movements, including axial expansion and contraction and bending over 90 degrees for 360-degree planar access. The dynamic Kirigami sleeve design achieves clinically acceptable friction force on intestinal mucosa with radial expansion, while minimizing tissue distention. A reinforced central channel supports the passage of tools to facilitate diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. A control box supports efficient locomotion and steering, achieving autonomous speeds of ~100 mm/min in vitro and ~43 mm/min in ex vivo intestinal tissue, and an assisted speed of ~200 mm/min in pig studies, without overdistention. Through in vivo pig studies, we demonstrated BIOSENTERO's potential for tissue biopsies, localized drug delivery, and real-time visualization in the deep intestinal region, without causing tissue overdistention and damage.