Towards the Design and Development of a Pediatric Neuroendoscope Tool Hydrocephalus in the pediatric population is often treated with endoscopic procedures, in which a rigid endoscope provides a working channel and needed visualization for brain manipulation. The lack of flexible and steerable endoscopic tools limits the ability of the surgeon to conduct complex operations. In this paper, we propose the design of a novel tool for such procedures that uses the compliance of a bending flexural joint to build a compact steerable multijoint tool. These joints are machined into a tube made of a superelastic material to create two joints near the tip of the tool. The directional stiffness properties of the flexural joint are exploited to minimize interjoint coupling. We perform a static analysis of each joint and a kinematic analysis of the entire robot. We follow this with the design of a handheld controller for this robot, and analyze its ability to control multiple degreesoffreedom of the robot while minimizing the coupling between joints.

MacroMicro MultiArm Robot for SinglePort Access Surgery Minimally invasive surgery is now a well established field in surgery but continuous efforts are made to reduce invasiveness even further. This paper proposes a novel concept of smalldiameter multiarm robot for SinglePort Access Surgery. The concept introduces a combination of backbone and actuation principles in a macromicro fashion to achieve an excellent decoupling of the triangulation platform (macro) and of the endeffectors (micro). Concentric tube robots are used for the triangulation platform, while compliant fluidicactuated bending segments are used as endeffectors. The fluidic actuation is advantageous as it minimally interferes with the triangulation platform. The triangulation platform on the other hand provides a stable base for the endeffectors such that large distal actuation bandwidth can be achieved. A specific embodiment for Spina Bifida repair is developed and proposed. The surgical and technical requirements as well as the mechanical design are presented in details. A first prototype is built and characterization experiments are conducted to evaluate its performance.