Version.01: design and development soft actuator prototype for surgical lighting system

Surgical luminaires are used for illumination of wounds during surgery. For optimal illumination surgical luminaries need to change their orientation several times during surgery. The aim of this project is to simplify and optimise the design of the surgical lighting system to overcome the structural limitation and to reduce singularity. Most of the surgical lighting systems (SLS) are made up of six links - in order to achieve five degree of freedom. This is an attempt to reduce the number of linkages in SLS by introducing a bendable soft actuator. The pneumatic bending actuator which is made of silicone rubber undergoes the desired deformation when each chamber is pressurised. Because of the flexibility soft actuators has the advantage to overcome the mechanical singularity faced in existing surgical lighting systems. A mathematical model has been developed for mapping geometric deformation of soft actuators. A fourth degree polynomial approximation has been used to characterise the behaviour of each chamber of the actuator.