Micro-motion controller

Micro-motions in surgical applications are small motions in the range of a few millimeters and are common in ophthalmic surgery, neurosurgery, and other surgeries which require precise manipulation over short distances. Robotic surgery is replacing traditional open surgery at a rapid pace due to the obvious health benefits, however, most of the robotic surgical tools use robotic motion controllers that are designed to work over a large portion of the human body, thus involving motion of the entire human arm at shoulder joint. This requirement to move a large inertial mass results in undesirable, unwanted, and imprecise motion. This senior design project has created a 2-axis micro-motion “capable” platform, where the device studies the most common linear, 2-D surgical micro-motion of pinched human fingers in a damped and un-damped state. Through a system of printed and modeled parts in combination with motors and encoders a microsurgical controller was developed which can provide location-based output on a screen. Mechanical damping was introduced to research potential stability of micro-motion in any surgeon’s otherwise unsteady hand. The device is to also serve as a starter set for future biomedical device research projects in Santa Clara University’s bioengineering department. Further developments in the microsurgical controller such as further scaling, addition of a third axis, haptic feedback through the microcontroller, and component encasing to allow productization for use on an industrial robotic surgical device for clinical applications

Haptics in Robot-Assisted Surgery: Challenges and Benefits

Robotic surgery is transforming the current surgical practice, not only by improving the conventional surgical methods but also by introducing innovative robot-enhanced approaches that broaden the capabilities of clinicians. Being mainly of man-machine collaborative type, surgical robots are seen as media that transfer pre- and intra-operative information to the operator and reproduce his/her motion, with appropriate filtering, scaling, or limitation, to physically interact with the patient. The field, however, is far from maturity and, more critically, is still a subject of controversy in medical communities. Limited or absent haptic feedback is reputed to be among reasons that impede further spread of surgical robots. In this paper objectives and challenges of deploying haptic technologies in surgical robotics is discussed and a systematic review is performed on works that have studied the effects of providing haptic information to the users in major branches of robotic surgery. It has been tried to encompass both classical works and the state of the art approaches, aiming at delivering a comprehensive and balanced survey both for researchers starting their work in this field and for the experts

a human in the loop cyber physical system for collaborative assembly in smart manufacturing

Abstract Industry 4.0 rose with the introduction of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and Internet of things (IoT) inside manufacturing systems. CPS represent self-controlled physical processes, having tight networking capabilities and efficient interfaces for human interaction. The interactive dimension of CPS reaches its maximum when defined in terms of natural human-machine interfaces (NHMI), i.e., those reducing the technological barriers required for the interaction. This paper presents a NHMI bringing the human decision-making capabilities inside the cybernetic control loop of a smart manufacturing assembly system. The interface allows to control, coordinate and cooperate with an industrial cobot during the task execution

From teleoperation to autonomous robot-assisted microsurgery: A survey

Robot-assisted microsurgery (RAMS) has many benefits compared to traditional microsurgery. Microsurgical platforms with advanced control strategies, high-quality micro-imaging modalities and micro-sensing systems are worth developing to further enhance the clinical outcomes of RAMS. Within only a few decades, microsurgical robotics has evolved into a rapidly developing research field with increasing attention all over the world. Despite the appreciated benefits, significant challenges remain to be solved. In this review paper, the emerging concepts and achievements of RAMS will be presented. We introduce the development tendency of RAMS from teleoperation to autonomous systems. We highlight the upcoming new research opportunities that require joint efforts from both clinicians and engineers to pursue further outcomes for RAMS in years to come

Recognition of Intentional Violations of Active Constraints in Cooperative Manipulation Tasks

Active Constraints (ACs) are high-level control algorithms deployed to assist a human operator in man-machine cooperative tasks [1], and define regions within which it is safe for the robot to move and cut [2]. To enhance the performance in cooperative surgical tasks, adaptive constraints have been exploited to optimally adjust the provided level of assistance according to some knowledge of the task, hardware or user. In [3] Hidden Markov Models were used for the run-time detection of the user intention to leave a guidance constraint to circumvent an obstacle. In this work, we present a novel, Neural Network (NN)-based method for the runtime classification of intentional and unintentional violations of ACs, that is trained on either statistical or frequency features from the enforced constraint forces. We investigate which set of parameters yield faster and more reliable classification results, both for guidance and regional constraints

Computer- and robot-assisted Medical Intervention

Medical robotics includes assistive devices used by the physician in order to make his/her diagnostic or therapeutic practices easier and more efficient. This chapter focuses on such systems. It introduces the general field of Computer-Assisted Medical Interventions, its aims, its different components and describes the place of robots in that context. The evolutions in terms of general design and control paradigms in the development of medical robots are presented and issues specific to that application domain are discussed. A view of existing systems, on-going developments and future trends is given. A case-study is detailed. Other types of robotic help in the medical environment (such as for assisting a handicapped person, for rehabilitation of a patient or for replacement of some damaged/suppressed limbs or organs) are out of the scope of this chapter.Comment: Handbook of Automation, Shimon Nof (Ed.) (2009) 000-00

Motion analysis of a robotic assisted surgery and microsurgery system - experimental verification

Motion analysis of a parallel robot assisted minimally invasive surgery/microsurgery system (PRAMiSS) and the control structures enabling it to achieve milli/micromanipulations under the constraint of moving through a fixed penetration point or so-called remote centre-of-motion (RCM) are presented in this article. Two control algorithms are proposed suitable for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) with submillimeter accuracy and for minimally invasive micro-surgery (MIMS) with submicrometer accuracy. The RCM constraint is performed without having any mechanical constraint. Control algorithms also apply orientation constraint preventing the tip to orient relative to the soft tissues due to the robot movements. Experiments were conducted to verify accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms for MIS and MIMS operations. The experimental results demonstrate accuracy and performance of the proposed position control algorithms