The smaller and more maneuverable the instruments available, the more treatments can be performed using minimally invasive techniques instead of open surgery. However, conventional minimally invasive instruments, which are moved and curved by mechanical devices such as pulleys, cannot be made arbitrarily small. We are therefore looking at structures made of elastic tubes (Concentric Tube Robots and Eccentric Tube Robots), which can be bent and stretched purely through their targeted arrangement and superimposition.
Depending on the rotation of the tubes in relation to each other, the curvature directions overlap vectorially and form a variable overall curvature. In contrast to Concentric Tube Robots, Eccentric Tube Robots offer the advantage that the tubes running next to each other can also serve as working channels for endoscopic instruments.
With Eccentric Tube Robots, we want to create the next generation of even smaller minimally invasive instruments.
Selected publications
- Mayer, Juliane; Narr, Julia; Pott, Peter P. (2025): Workspace Characterization of a Multi-Lumen Eccentric Tube Robot for Microsurgery. In: HSMR 2025. Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics. London, UK, 2025. London, UK: Imperial College London. DOI: 10.31256/HSMR25.51.
- Mayer, Juliane; Dumancic, Marcel; Pott, Peter P. (2024): Symmetric single-input eccentric tube robot (ETR) for manual use. In Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering 10 (2), pp. 103–106. DOI: 10.1515/cdbme-2024-1078.
- Mayer, Juliane; Steinbrenner, Björn Tobias; Pott, Peter P. (2024): Shape-locked Geometry Reduces Snapping Effects in Concentric Tube Robots. In: HSMR 2024. Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics. London, UK, 2024. London, UK: Imperial College London. DOI: 10.31256/HSMR2024.28.