Development of a cognitive robotic system for simple surgical tasks

The introduction of robotic surgery within the operating rooms has significantly improved the quality of many surgical procedures. Recently, the research on medical robotic systems focused on increasing the level of autonomy in order to give them the possibility to carry out simple surgical actions autonomously. This paper reports on the development of technologies for introducing automation within the surgical workflow. The results have been obtained during the ongoing FP7 European funded project Intelligent Surgical Robotics (I-SUR). The main goal of the project is to demonstrate that autonomous robotic surgical systems can carry out simple surgical tasks effectively and without major intervention by surgeons. To fulfil this goal, we have developed innovative solutions (both in terms of technologies and algorithms) for the following aspects: fabrication of soft organ models starting from CT images, surgical planning and execution of movement of robot arms in contact with a deformable environment, designing a surgical interface minimizing the cognitive load of the surgeon supervising the actions, intra-operative sensing and reasoning to detect normal transitions and unexpected events. All these technologies have been integrated using a component-based software architecture to control a novel robot designed to perform the surgical actions under study. In this work we provide an overview of our system and report on preliminary results of the automatic execution of needle insertion for the cryoablation of kidney tumours

A Reinforcement Learning Approach to Reforestation through Robots

openAl giorno d'oggi il contrasto alle emissioni di anidride carbonica costitituisce una sfida su scala globale. È noto come la deforestazione contribuisca a ridurre la capacità del pianeta di assorbimento dell'anidride carbonica generata dall'attività umana, in particolare dai processi industriali. Viene qui documentata una simulazione di un ambiente desertico, costruita tramite il motore grafico Unity, nella quale una rete di pannelli fotovoltaici va ad alimentare un macchinario che produce acqua attraverso la deumidificazione dell'aria. L'acqua prodotta viene quindi raccolta in un dispenser e trasferita ad un veicolo robotico su ruote, che ha il compito di spostarsi e irrigare degli alberi piantati in una zona circoscritta. Per mezzo di tecniche di Reinforcement Learning tale robot è addestrato ad irrigare la zona garantendo la crescita giornaliera degli alberi e minimizzando lo spreco di acqua, agendo anche sulla base delle condizioni meteorologiche locali. Questo studio non riguarda l'addestramento e i suoi risultati in senso stretto: tuttavia, vengono qui fornite alcune indicazioni su come eseguire il training.Carbon mitigation effort is nowadays a pressing global challenge. While some advancements are achieved on mitigation techniques, the fact that deforestation hinders the capacity of the Earth to absorb the carbon dioxide generated by human endeavour needs to be addressed. A software simulation of a desert environment created through the Unity game engine is hereby documented. In this simulation, a grid of photovoltaic panels powers a device that produces water through dehumidification of the air. The water is consequently stored inside a reservoir and transferred to a robotic vehicle with the task of moving and watering trees that are planted within a given area. By means of Reinforcement Learning techniques, the robot will have to be trained to water the trees in the area, assuring their daily growth while minimizing the waste of water and assessing the local weather conditions in order to make decisions. This study does not concern the training itself and its results: nevertheless, some indications on how to perform the training are provided

A heuristic-based approach to code-smell detection

Encapsulation and data hiding are central tenets of the object oriented paradigm. Deciding what data and behaviour to form into a class and where to draw the line between its public and private details can make the difference between a class that is an understandable, flexible and reusable abstraction and one which is not. This decision is a difficult one and may easily result in poor encapsulation which can then have serious implications for a number of system qualities. It is often hard to identify such encapsulation problems within large software systems until they cause a maintenance problem (which is usually too late) and attempting to perform such analysis manually can also be tedious and error prone. Two of the common encapsulation problems that can arise as a consequence of this decomposition process are data classes and god classes. Typically, these two problems occur together – data classes are lacking in functionality that has typically been sucked into an over-complicated and domineering god class. This paper describes the architecture of a tool which automatically detects data and god classes that has been developed as a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. The technique has been evaluated in a controlled study on two large open source systems which compare the tool results to similar work by Marinescu, who employs a metrics-based approach to detecting such features. The study provides some valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the two approache

Design Science Research: Building evaluation into the construction of indigenous cultural artefacts in New Zealand

There is increasing interest in the technological construction of the cultural artefact. However the uptake of technology may be coming at a cost to the historical values sincere to cultural groups. This paper reports on evaluation techniques applied towards a recent research effort delivering a virtual reality experience that embraced the traditions of indigenous Maori within a learning, language and cultural context. A 3D computer generated artefact was constructed portraying an indigenous Maori mythological story able to interact with cultural objects using Design Science Research (DSR) as a research method, then evaluated as a cultural deployment using an array of evaluation techniques. This article expands the research material available to cultural research in DSR, as well as demonstrating how DSR evaluation can be viewed during the construction of an indigenous cultural artefact