Endoscopic procedures for diagnostics and therapy are changing medicine sustainably. Two important factors must be fulfilled for a successful intervention: Good maneuverability is necessary to reach areas that are difficult to access. In addition, the intervention in the target area requires high structural stiffness in order to withstand manipulation forces and provide the doctor with a stable working platform. However, today's endoscopes cannot fulfill both requirements at the same time. Either purely rigid or purely flexible endoscopes are used, and stiffenable mechanisms are extremely rare - even in research. As a bridge between flexible and rigid robots, a hydraulically actuated, snake-like endoscope will be investigated in the HALEy project.
