For diagnoses of digestive organs, capsule endoscopes are widely used and offer valuable information without patient’s discomfort. A general capsule endoscope which consists of image sensing module, telemetry module and battery is able to move along gastro-intestinal tracts passively only through peristaltic waves. Thus, it is likely to have some limitations for doctor to acquire images from the desired organs and to diagnose them effectively. As solutions to these problems, a locomotive function of capsule endoscopes has being developed. We have proposed a capsule-type microrobot with synchronized multiple legs. However, the proposed capsular microrobot also has some limitations, such as low speed in advancement, inconvenience to controlling the microrobot, lack of an image module, and deficiency in a steering module. In this paper, we will describe the limitations of the locomotive microrobot and propose solutions to the drawbacks. The solutions are applied to the capsular microrobot and evaluated by in-vitro tests. Based on the experimental results, we conclude that the proposed solutions are effective and appropriate for the locomotive microrobot to explore inside intestinal tracts.

In this paper, a robotic system which consists of a precision manipulator and a micro gripper for a micro system assembly is presented. By the experiment, we proved that the developed the system gives acceptable performance when minute operations. Developed the micro-nano robot is actuated by newly proposed modular revolute and prismatic actuators. As an end-effector of this system, micro gripper is designed and fabricated with MEMS technology and the displacement of jaw is up to 142.8 micro meter. We think that new robot system will be appropriate for micro system assembly tasks and life science application