Design and Fabrication of a Minimally Invasive Surgical Device with Customized Shape Memory Alloy Spring Actuator

Abstract

A shape memory alloy (SMA)-based spring actuated gripper (SAG) was designed and developed for facilitating minimally invasive surgeries (MIS). Specifically the research consists of design and development of a SMA spring which acts as the actuator for the gripper. A novel mechanism was also developed to transfer the actuator force to the gripper jaws. Further, the actuator force was characterized by a testing apparatus which uses a full-bridge load cell as the force sensing element. The activation temperature of the SMA actuator was obtained by performing differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) tests on the samples.