Soft robots in surgery

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) represents the gold standard in the majority of abdominal operations, although some fundamental limitations are still present and are far to be really addressed despite emerging robotic solutions. Flexible endoscopes can exploit their high flexibility to reach the surgical target while being inserted remotely or by a natural orifice. However endoscopes may lack stability that rigid tools normally provide. Novel surgical instrumentation is being developed in order to provide higher dexterity and flexibility to the surgeon, but unlike traditional surgical manipulators, here we report the approach followed in the development of the STIFF-FLOP manipulator. The main idea is based on the exploitation of soft materials to be intrinsically flexible and safe while combining different fluidic actuation technologies to enable high dexterity and selective stiffness variability. In this chapter, the functional evolution of the robot is reported highlighting advantages and drawbacks that steered the development of a manipulator which in the end demonstrated to be effective in overcoming mobility limitations experienced with standard rigid tools.