Adaptive Clamping Mechanism-based a Novel Slave Manipulator for Endovascular Catheterization

Robot-assisted catheter systems can obviously reduce the radiation exposure to the surgeon and lessen the fatigue caused by standing for long time in protective clothing. However, few designs have taken the adaptive clamping of a catheter/guidewire manipulator into consideration. Additionally, limited research has been conducted in the damage of the clamping mechanism to the catheter. This paper presents an adaptive clamping mechanism based on the electromagnetic braking for a catheter/guidewire manipulator which can be used in vascular interventional surgeries training system. A valuable contribution is that the proposed clamping structure can adaptively clamping catheters or guidewires of different diameters without replacing the corresponding clamping structure, thus reducing operation time and improving the safety of the surgery. In addition, the force measurement experiments for different clamping objects were conducted. The experimental results show that the contract force can be measured for each bending region of the vascular model without using the corresponding clamping structure. Therefore, the presented clamping structure hinge-based provides important insights into the development of safe and reliable robotic catheter manipulators incorporating effective and convenience clamping for endovascular catheterization.