5 research outputs found

    Development of a remote trauma care assist robot

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    Abstract-In typical teleoperated surgeries, skilled staff are still necessary in the remote surgical room to change manipulator tooling and to manage surgical supply delivery and removal. This paper describes the development of a nurse robot to provide automated support to a teleoperated surgical manipulator system in environments where the presence of skilled surgical support staff may not be practical. The tools must be inserted precisely into a compliant manipulator in a timely manner, and the supplies are diverse in nature. To support experimental investigations and evaluations, a seven degrees-of-freedom commercially available manipulator was selected. The design of novel end-effecters, tool grasping and supply holding features, and tool auto-loading systems for optimum surgical tool changing and supply delivery in minimum time is presented. A novel approach for calibration of the nurse robot among compliant and rigid subsystems and for managing forces during subsystem interaction is described and experimental results using this force management approach are presented. Overall experimental performance data for the nurse robot system during tool changing and supply delivery tasks is also presented to illustrate the feasibility of performing these functions in a remote medical or trauma care-assist cell

    Quantification of human operator skill in a driving simulator for applications in human adaptive mechatronics

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    Nowadays, the Human Machine System (HMS) is considered to be a proven technology, and now plays an important role in various human activities. However, this system requires that only a human has an in-depth understanding of the machine operation, and is thus a one-way relationship. Therefore, researchers have recently developed Human Adaptive Mechatronics (HAM) to overcome this problem and balance the roles of the human and machine in any HMS. HAM is different compared to ordinary HMS in terms of its ability to adapt to changes in its surroundings and the changing skill level of humans. Nonetheless, the main problem with HAM is in quantifying the human skill level in machine manipulation as part of human recognition. Therefore, this thesis deals with a proposed formula to quantify and classify the skill of the human operator in driving a car as an example application between humans and machines. The formula is evaluated using the logical conditions and the definition of skill in HAM in terms of time and error. The skill indices are classified into five levels: Very Highly Skilled, Highly Skilled, Medium Skilled, Low Skilled and Very Low Skilled. Driving was selected because it is considered to be a complex mechanical task that involves skill, a human and a machine. However, as the safety of the human subjects when performing the required tasks in various situations must be considered, a driving simulator was used. The simulator was designed using Microsoft Visual Studio, controlled using a USB steering wheel and pedals, as was able to record the human ii path and include the desired effects on the road. Thus, two experiments involving the driving simulator were performed; 20 human subjects with a varying numbers of years experience in driving and gaming were used in the experiments. In the first experiment, the subjects were asked to drive in Expected and Guided Conditions (EGC). Five guided tracks were used to show the variety of driving skill: straight, circular, elliptical, square and triangular. The results of this experiment indicate that the tracking error is inversely proportional to the elapsed time. In second experiment, the subjects experienced Sudden Transitory Conditions (STC). Two types of unexpected situations in driving were used: tyre puncture and slippery surface. This experiment demonstrated that the tracking error is not directly proportional to the elapsed time. Both experiments also included the correlation between experience and skill. For the first time, a new skill index formula is proposed based on the logical conditions and the definition of skill in HAM

    Digital Transformation and Public Services

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    Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process affects various welfare services provided by the public sector, and the ensuing implications thereof. Ultimately, this book seeks to understand if it is conceivable for digital advancement to result in the creation of private/non-governmental alternatives to welfare services, possibly in a manner that transcends national boundaries. This study also investigates the possible ramifications of technological development for the public sector and the Western welfare society at large. This book takes its point of departure from the 2016 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report that targets specific public service areas in which government needs to adopt new strategies not to fall behind. Specifically, this report emphasizes the focus on digitalization of health care/social care, education, and protection services, including the use of assistive technologies referred to as "digital welfare." Hence, this book explores the factors potentially leading to whether state actors could be overrun by other non-governmental actors, disrupting the current status quo of welfare services. The book seeks to provide an innovative, enriching, and controversial take on society at large and how various aspects of the public sector can be, and are, affected by the ongoing digitalization process in a way that is not covered by extant literature on the market. This book takes its point of departure in Sweden given the fact that Sweden is one of the most digitalized countries in Europe, according to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), making it a pertinent research case. However, as digitalization transcends national borders, large parts of the subject matter take on an international angle. This includes cases from several other countries around Europe as well as the United States

    Medical-Data-Models.org:A collection of freely available forms (September 2016)

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    MDM-Portal (Medical Data-Models) is a meta-data repository for creating, analysing, sharing and reusing medical forms, developed by the Institute of Medical Informatics, University of Muenster in Germany. Electronic forms for documentation of patient data are an integral part within the workflow of physicians. A huge amount of data is collected either through routine documentation forms (EHRs) for electronic health records or as case report forms (CRFs) for clinical trials. This raises major scientific challenges for health care, since different health information systems are not necessarily compatible with each other and thus information exchange of structured data is hampered. Software vendors provide a variety of individual documentation forms according to their standard contracts, which function as isolated applications. Furthermore, free availability of those forms is rarely the case. Currently less than 5 % of medical forms are freely accessible. Based on this lack of transparency harmonization of data models in health care is extremely cumbersome, thus work and know-how of completed clinical trials and routine documentation in hospitals are hard to be re-used. The MDM-Portal serves as an infrastructure for academic (non-commercial) medical research to contribute a solution to this problem. It already contains more than 4,000 system-independent forms (CDISC ODM Format, www.cdisc.org, Operational Data Model) with more than 380,000 dataelements. This enables researchers to view, discuss, download and export forms in most common technical formats such as PDF, CSV, Excel, SQL, SPSS, R, etc. A growing user community will lead to a growing database of medical forms. In this matter, we would like to encourage all medical researchers to register and add forms and discuss existing forms

    Draw My Life: An analysis of the quantity and typology of emotional linguistic content in self-identified female and male YouTubers’ life narratives

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    La presente investigación tiene como objetivo determinar similitudes y diferencias en la cantidad y tipología de expresiones relacionadas con la emoción – referencias tanto implícitas como explícitas a “feelings, moods and all kinds of affective experience” [sentimientos, estados de ánimo y todo tipo de experiencias afectivas] (Mackenzie y Alba-Juez, 2019, p. 15) – de 100 personas autoidentificadas como mujeres (con un corpus de 248.613 palabras en total) y 100 personas autoidentificadas como hombres (con un corpus de 227.979 palabras en total) en sus vídeos autobiográficos dentro del género Draw My Life de YouTube. El proyecto se sustenta en la noción de Lutz (1990, p. 151) de que “any discourse on emotion is also, at least implicitly, a discourse on gender” [cualquier discurso sobre la emoción es también, al menos implícitamente, un discurso sobre género], con frecuentes suposiciones en investigaciones previas sobre las expectativas sociales relacionadas con la “greater emotional expressivity” [mayor expresividad emocional] de las mujeres (Chaplin, 2015, p. 14) y la “restrictive emotionality” [emocionalidad restrictiva] de los hombres (O’Neil, Good, & Holmes, 1995, p. 176). Con el objetivo de obtener datos completos y fiables sobre las expresiones relacionadas con las emociones de los YouTubers femeninos y masculinos, el estudio combina métodos de investigación cuantitativos y cualitativos que se basan en varias herramientas computerizadas, así como en procesos de anotación manual. En particular, se adopta un marco de análisis crítico del discurso basado en corpus, motivado por la suposición de Baker et al. (2008, p. 227) de que las investigaciones de Lingüística de Corpus “offer the researcher a reasonably high degree of objectivity; that is, they enable the researcher to approach the texts (or text surface) (relatively) free from any preconceived or existing notions regarding their linguistic or semantic/pragmatic content” [ofrecen al investigador un grado razonablemente alto de objetividad; es decir, permiten al investigador acercarse a los textos (o la superficie del texto) (relativamente) libre de cualquier noción preconcebida o existente sobre su contenido lingüístico o semántico/ pragmático]. El trabajo se enmarca dentro del dominio de los Estudios de Discurso Asistidos por Corpus, definido por Partington, Duguid y Taylor (2013, p. 10) como “that set of studies into the form and/or function of language which incorporate the use of computerised corpora in their analysis” [ese conjunto de estudios sobre la forma y/o la función del lenguaje que incorporan el uso de corpus informatizados en su análisis”]. Las herramientas informáticas específicas que se utilizan en el análisis de los datos de Draw My Life relacionados con sentimientos/emociones son Lingmotif, LIWC2015 (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) y Wmatrix4
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