Sinusoidal Peristaltic Waves in Soft Actuator for Mimicry of Esophageal Swallowing

In order to understand fluid transport throughout esophageal swallowing in man, a biologically inspired soft-robotic peristaltic actuator has been designed and manufactured to perform biomimetic swallowing. To achieve congruence with current mathematical modeling techniques for esophageal peristalsis, this paper examines the capability of the device (empirical) towards achieving sinusoidal transport waves with variations of clinically significant parameters such as amplitude and wavelength. The performance of the device to fit the commanded trajectory, by minimization of mean squared error, is tested over the range of wavefront length 30 ≤ λ/2 ≤ 60 mm and amplitude 6-8 mm in a two-dimensional capability analysis. It is found that the device is capable of achieving propagation of families of wave shapes with less than 5% full scale mean error, which improves for increasing wavefront length and reducing amplitude. The aim for the device in the future is to inspire a novel rheometric technique in the physical domain which characterizes fluid formulations based on intrabolus pressure signatures. This analysis expresses the trajectory generation technique and performance of the novel device to produce continuous peristaltic waves towards biomimetic swallowing.