Bio-inspired solutions for locomotion in the gastrointestinal tract background and perspectives教程.pdfVIP

Downloaded from on February 15, 2012 Bio-inspired solutions for locomotion in the gastrointestinal tract: background and perspectives Arianna Menciassi and Paolo Dario Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 2003 361, 2287-2298 doi: 10.1098/rsta.2003.1255 Email alerting service Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article - sign up in the box at the top right-hand corner of the article or click here To subscribe to Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A go to: /subscriptions Downloaded from on February 15, 2012 10.1098/rsta.2003.1255 Bio-inspired solutions for locomotion in the gastrointestinal tract: background and perspectives By Arianna Menciassiy a n d Paolo Da rio Center for Research in Microengineering, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Piazza Martiri della Libertµa, 33, 56127 Pisa, Italy (arianna@sssup.it) Published online 20 August 2003 This paper illustrates a bio-inspired approach to e®ective, smooth and safe naviga- tion in the human body and, in particular, in the gastrointestinal tract. This idea originates from the medical need to develop more powerful tools for microendoscopy, which is one of the most challenging frontiers of modern medicine. Understanding motion and perception systems of lower animal forms, such as parasites, worms, insects and snakes, can help to design and fabricate bio-inspired robots able to nav- igate in tortuous, slippery and di±cult-to-access cavities of the human body. A pre- liminary study of a biomimetic adhesion system for the human tissues is presented in this work and some technological implementations are illustrated and