Related papers: Active Lubrication of Transluminal Medical Instrum…
Advances in flexible catheters pave the way for minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment of luminal organs and tubular structures through endoluminal interventions. A key challenge is in establishing non-constraining pressure monitoring…
Friction is the essential mediator of terrestrial locomotion, yet in robotic systems it is almost always treated as a passive property fixed by surface materials and conditions. Here, we introduce ultrasonic lubrication as a method to…
Soft robotic instruments could navigate delicate, tortuous anatomy more safely than rigid tools, but clinical adoption is limited by insufficient tip functionalization and real-time feedback at the tissue interface. Few sensing and…
Embolization, stroke, ischaemic lesion, and perforation remain significant concerns in endovascular interventions. Intravascular sensing of tool interaction with the arteries is advantageous to minimize such complications and enhance…
Healthy articular cartilage, covering the ends of bones in major joints such as hips and knees, presents the most efficiently-lubricated surface known in nature, with friction coefficients as low as 0.001 up to physiologically high…
Relative motion between soft wet solids arises in a number of applications in natural and artificial settings, and invariably couples elastic deformation and fluid flow. We explore this in a minimal setting by considering a fluid-immersed…
Dynamics simulation with frictional contacts is important for a wide range of applications, from cloth simulation to object manipulation. Recent methods using smoothed lagged friction forces have enabled robust and differentiable simulation…
We consider some basic principles of fluid-induced lubrication at soft interfaces. In particular, we show how the presence of a soft substrate leads to an increase in the physical separation between surfaces sliding past each other. By…
Elastohydrodynamic lubrication, or simply soft lubrication, refers to the motion of deformable objects near a boundary lubricated by a fluid, and is one of the key physical mechanisms to minimise friction and wear in natural and engineered…
Electrospinning has exhibited excellent benefits to treat the trauma for tissue engineering due to its produced micro/nano fibrous structure. It can effectively adhere to the tissue surface for long-term continuous therapy. This paper…
Artificial soft matter systems have appeared as important tools to harness mechanical motion for microscale manipulation. Typically, this motion is driven either by the external fields or by mutual interaction between the colloids. In the…
Granular jamming has recently become popular in soft robotics with widespread applications including industrial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. Previous work has investigated the use of various techniques that exploit the nature of…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
Aging populations and the rising prevalence of neurological and musculoskeletal disorders increase the demand for wearable mobility assistive devices that are effective, comfortable, and anatomically compatible. Many existing systems use…
Minimally invasive interventions performed inside brain vessels with the synergistic use of microcatheters pushed over guidewires have revolutionized the way aneurysms, stroke, arteriovenous malformations, brain tumors and other…
Endovascular guidewire manipulation is essential for minimally-invasive clinical applications (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI), Mechanical thrombectomy techniques for acute ischemic stroke (AIS), or Transjugular intrahepatic…
Ultrasonic cavitation is being used in medical applications as a way to influence matter, such as tissue or drug vehicles, on a micro-scale. Oscillating or collapsing cavitation bubbles provide transient mechanical force fields, which can,…
The development of microfluidic devices is still hindered by the lack of robust fundamental building blocks that constitute any fluidic system. An attractive approach is optical actuation because light field interaction is contactless and…
Non-invasive therapeutic ultrasound methods, such as high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), have limited access to tissue targets shadowed by bones or presence of gas. This study demonstrates that an ultrasonically actuated medical…
Endoluminal surgery offers a minimally invasive option for early-stage gastrointestinal and urinary tract cancers but is limited by surgical tools and a steep learning curve. Robotic systems, particularly continuum robots, provide flexible…