Redesign Of The Control Unit For Colonoscopy -By Axiomatic Design Theory

Colonoscopy is the endoscopic examination of the large bowel and the distal part of the small bowel with a CCD camera or a fiber optic camera on a flexible tube which passes through the colon. One of the areas to be improved is the control unit in the existing colonoscopy; especially the feedback from the clinical experience is that the control unit is difficult to operate in a single-person colonoscopy procedure. This difficulty lies in two aspects:operability and ergonomics.The overall objective of this thesis study was to solve the aforementioned problem. The specific objectives of the study were:(â…°) development of a systematic procedure for design of such a human-machine cooperative system to make the system operable; (â…±) application of the systematic procedure to design the control unit to address the area of concerns.Four works have been done to achieve the objectives:(1) analyze the principles of hand motion and the manipulation force of the fingers; (2) analyze the existing control unit by axiomatic design theory; (3) redesign the control unit, addressing the area of concerns; (4) verify the feasibility of the proposed design of the control unit.This study concluded:(1) the existing design methodology for human-machine cooperative systems was not well developed; (2) the proposed design of the control unit is promising in solving the area of concerns.The main contributions of the thesis are of two folds. First, the proposed design methodology for human-machine cooperative systems is more rational than the existing approach in the field of design theory and methodology. Second, a redesigned control unit is presented that is by trackball to achieve the deflections of end-effecter, which is more operable and ergonomic than the old one.