Medical Robotics

The first generation of surgical robots are already being installed in a number of operating rooms around the world. Robotics is being introduced to medicine because it allows for unprecedented control and precision of surgical instruments in minimally invasive procedures. So far, robots have been used to position an endoscope, perform gallbladder surgery and correct gastroesophogeal reflux and heartburn. The ultimate goal of the robotic surgery field is to design a robot that can be used to perform closed-chest, beating-heart surgery. The use of robotics in surgery will expand over the next decades without any doubt. Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is a revolutionary approach in surgery. In MIS, the operation is performed with instruments and viewing equipment inserted into the body through small incisions created by the surgeon, in contrast to open surgery with large incisions. This minimizes surgical trauma and damage to healthy tissue, resulting in shorter patient recovery time. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the state-of-art, to present new ideas, original results and practical experiences in this expanding area. Nevertheless, many chapters in the book concern advanced research on this growing area. The book provides critical analysis of clinical trials, assessment of the benefits and risks of the application of these technologies. This book is certainly a small sample of the research activity on Medical Robotics going on around the globe as you read it, but it surely covers a good deal of what has been done in the field recently, and as such it works as a valuable source for researchers interested in the involved subjects, whether they are currently “medical roboticists” or not

Robot manipulator skill learning and generalising through teleoperation

Robot manipulators have been widely used for simple repetitive, and accurate tasks in industrial plants, such as pick and place, assembly and welding etc., but it is still hard to deploy in human-centred environments for dexterous manipulation tasks, such as medical examination and robot-assisted healthcare. These tasks are not only related to motion planning and control but also to the compliant interaction behaviour of robots, e.g. motion control, force regulation and impedance adaptation simultaneously under dynamic and unknown environments. Recently, with the development of collaborative robotics (cobots) and machine learning, robot skill learning and generalising have attained increasing attention from robotics, machine learning and neuroscience communities. Nevertheless, learning complex and compliant manipulation skills, such as manipulating deformable objects, scanning the human body and folding clothes, is still challenging for robots. On the other hand, teleoperation, also namely remote operation or telerobotics, has been an old research area since 1950, and there have been a number of applications such as space exploration, telemedicine, marine vehicles and emergency response etc. One of its advantages is to combine the precise control of robots with human intelligence to perform dexterous and safety-critical tasks from a distance. In addition, telepresence allows remote operators could feel the actual interaction between the robot and the environment, including the vision, sound and haptic feedback etc. Especially under the development of various augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and wearable devices, intuitive and immersive teleoperation have received increasing attention from robotics and computer science communities. Thus, various human-robot collaboration (HRC) interfaces based on the above technologies were developed to integrate robot control and telemanipulation by human operators for robot skills learning from human beings. In this context, robot skill learning could benefit teleoperation by automating repetitive and tedious tasks, and teleoperation demonstration and interaction by human teachers also allow the robot to learn progressively and interactively. Therefore, in this dissertation, we study human-robot skill transfer and generalising through intuitive teleoperation interfaces for contact-rich manipulation tasks, including medical examination, manipulating deformable objects, grasping soft objects and composite layup in manufacturing. The introduction, motivation and objectives of this thesis are introduced in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, a literature review on manipulation skills acquisition through teleoperation is carried out, and the motivation and objectives of this thesis are discussed subsequently. Overall, the main contents of this thesis have three parts: Part 1 (Chapter 3) introduces the development and controller design of teleoperation systems with multimodal feedback, which is the foundation of this project for robot learning from human demonstration and interaction. In Part 2 (Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7), we studied primitive skill library theory, behaviour tree-based modular method, and perception-enhanced method to improve the generalisation capability of learning from the human demonstrations. And several applications were employed to evaluate the effectiveness of these methods.In Part 3 (Chapter 8), we studied the deep multimodal neural networks to encode the manipulation skill, especially the multimodal perception information. This part conducted physical experiments on robot-assisted ultrasound scanning applications.Chapter 9 summarises the contributions and potential directions of this thesis. Keywords: Learning from demonstration; Teleoperation; Multimodal interface; Human-in-the-loop; Compliant control; Human-robot interaction; Robot-assisted sonography

Human factors in instructional augmented reality for intravehicular spaceflight activities and How gravity influences the setup of interfaces operated by direct object selection

In human spaceflight, advanced user interfaces are becoming an interesting mean to facilitate human-machine interaction, enhancing and guaranteeing the sequences of intravehicular space operations. The efforts made to ease such operations have shown strong interests in novel human-computer interaction like Augmented Reality (AR). The work presented in this thesis is directed towards a user-driven design for AR-assisted space operations, iteratively solving issues arisen from the problem space, which also includes the consideration of the effect of altered gravity on handling such interfaces.Auch in der bemannten Raumfahrt steigt das Interesse an neuartigen Benutzerschnittstellen, um nicht nur die Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion effektiver zu gestalten, sondern auch um einen korrekten Arbeitsablauf sicherzustellen. In der Vergangenheit wurden wiederholt Anstrengungen unternommen, Innenbordarbeiten mit Hilfe von Augmented Reality (AR) zu erleichtern. Diese Arbeit konzentriert sich auf einen nutzerorientierten AR-Ansatz, welcher zum Ziel hat, die Probleme schrittweise in einem iterativen Designprozess zu lösen. Dies erfordert auch die Berücksichtigung veränderter Schwerkraftbedingungen

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 223 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in December, 1988

Design and validation of a system for controlling a robot for 3D ultrasound scanning of the lower limbs

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a common circulatory problem featured by arterial narrowing or stenosis, usually in the lower limbs (i.e. legs). Without sufficient blood supply, in the case of PAD, the patient may suffer from intermittent claudication, or even require an amputation. Due to the PAD’s high prevalence yet low public awareness in the early stages, its diagnosis becomes very important. Among the most common medical imaging technologies in PAD diagnosis, the ultrasound probe has the advantages of lower cost and non-radiation. Traditional ultrasound scanning is conducted by sonographers and it causes musculoskeletal disorders in the operators. In addition, the data obtained from the manual operation are unable for the three-dimensional reconstruction of the artery needed for further study. Medical ultrasound robots release sonographers from routine lifting strain and provide accurate data for three-dimensional reconstruction. However, most existing medical ultrasound robots are designed for other purposes, and are unsuited to PAD diagnosis in the lower limbs. In this study, we present a novel medical ultrasound robot designed for PAD diagnosis in the lower limbs. The robot platform and the system setup are illustrated. Its forward and inverse kinematic models are solved by decomposing a complex parallel robot into several simple assemblies. Singularity issues and workspace are also discussed. Robots need to meet certain accuracy requirements to perform dedicated tasks. Our robot is calibrated by direct measurement with a laser tracker. The calibration method used is easy to implement without requiring knowledge of advanced calibration or heavy computation. The calibration result shows that, as an early prototype, the robot has noticeable errors in manufacturing and assembling. The implemented calibration method greatly improves the robot's accuracy. A force control design is essential when the robot needs to interact with an object/environment. Variable admittance controllers are implemented to adapt the variable stiffness encountered in human-robot interaction. An intuitive implementation of the passivity theory is proposed to ensure that the admittance model possesses a passivity property. Finally, experiments involving human interaction demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control design

Instruction with 3D Computer Generated Anatomy

Research objectives. 1) To create an original and useful software application; 2) to investigate the utility of dyna-linking for teaching upper limb anatomy. Dyna-linking is an arrangement whereby interaction with one representation automatically drives the behaviour of another representation. Method. An iterative user-centred software development methodology was used to build, test and refine successive prototypes of an upper limb software tutorial. A randomised trial then tested the null hypothesis: There will be no significant difference in learning outcomes between participants using dyna-linked 2D and 3D representations of the upper limb and those using non dyna-linked representations. Data was analysed in SPSS using factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results and analysis. The study failed to reject the null hypothesis as there was no signi cant di fference between experimental conditions. Post-hoc analysis revealed that participants with low prior knowledge performed significantly better (p = 0.036) without dyna-linking (mean gain = 7.45) than with dyna-linking (mean gain = 4.58). Participants with high prior knowledge performed equally well with or without dyna-linking. These findings reveal an aptitude by treatment interaction (ATI) whereby the effectiveness of dyna-linking varies according to learner ability. On average, participants using the non dyna-linked system spent 3 minutes and 4 seconds longer studying the tutorial. Participants using the non dyna-linked system clicked 30% more on the representations. Dyna-linking had a high perceived value in questionnaire surveys (n=48) and a focus group (n=7). Conclusion. Dyna-linking has a high perceived value but may actually over-automate learning by prematurely giving novice learners a fully worked solution. Further research is required to confirm if this finding is repeated in other domains, with different learners and more sophisticated implementations of dyna-linking

Research on real-time physics-based deformation for haptic-enabled medical simulation

This study developed a multiple effective visuo-haptic surgical engine to handle a variety of surgical manipulations in real-time. Soft tissue models are based on biomechanical experiment and continuum mechanics for greater accuracy. Such models will increase the realism of future training systems and the VR/AR/MR implementations for the operating room

Implementation of Virtual Reality (VR) simulators in Norwegian maritime pilotage training

With millions of tons of cargo transported to and from Norwegian ports every year, the maritime waterways in Norway are heavily used. The high consequences of accidents and mishaps require well-trained seafarers and safe operating practices. The normal crews of vessels are supported by the Norwegian Coastal Administration (NCA) pilot service when operating vessels not meeting specific regulations. Simulator training is used as part of the toolset designed to educate, train, and advance the knowledge of maritime pilots in order to improve their operability. The NCA is working on an internal project to distribute Virtual Reality (VR) simulators to selected pilot stations along the coast and train and familiarize maritime pilots with the tool. There has been a lack of research on virtual reality simulators and how they are implemented in maritime organizations. The goal of this research is to see if a VR-simulator can be used as a training tool within the Norwegian Coastal Administration's pilot service. Furthermore, the findings of this study contribute to the understanding of VR-simulators in the field of Maritime Education and Training (MET). The thesis is addressing two research questions: 1. Is the Virtual Reality training useful in the competence development process of Norwegian maritime pilots? 2. How can the Virtual Reality simulators improve training outcomes of today’s maritime pilot education? The data gathered from the systematic literature review corresponds to the findings of the interviews. Considering the similarities with previous study findings from sectors such as healthcare, construction, and education, it is concluded that the results of the interviews can be generalized. For maritime pilots, the simulator offers recurrent scenario-based training and a high level of immersion. Pilots can learn at home, onboard a vessel, at the pilot station, and in group settings thanks to the system's mobility and user-friendliness. In terms of motivation and training effectiveness, the study finds that VR-simulators are effective and beneficial. The technology received positive reviews from the pilots. The simulator can be used to teach both novice and experienced maritime pilots about new operations, larger tonnage, and new operational areas, according to the findings of the research. After the NCA has utilized VR-simulators for some time, additional research may analyze the success of VR-simulators using a training evaluation study and investigate the impact of VR-training in the organization