Ground Robotic Hand Applications for the Space Program study (GRASP)

This document reports on a NASA-STDP effort to address research interests of the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) through a study entitled, Ground Robotic-Hand Applications for the Space Program (GRASP). The primary objective of the GRASP study was to identify beneficial applications of specialized end-effectors and robotic hand devices for automating any ground operations which are performed at the Kennedy Space Center. Thus, operations for expendable vehicles, the Space Shuttle and its components, and all payloads were included in the study. Typical benefits of automating operations, or augmenting human operators performing physical tasks, include: reduced costs; enhanced safety and reliability; and reduced processing turnaround time

User Needs, Benefits, and Integration of Robotic Systems in a Space Station Laboratory

The methodology, results and conclusions of all tasks of the User Needs, Benefits, and Integration Study (UNBIS) of Robotic Systems in a Space Station Laboratory are summarized. Study goals included the determination of user requirements for robotics within the Space Station, United States Laboratory. In Task 1, three experiments were selected to determine user needs and to allow detailed investigation of microgravity requirements. In Task 2, a NASTRAN analysis of Space Station response to robotic disturbances, and acceleration measurement of a standard industrial robot (Intelledex Model 660) resulted in selection of two ranges of microgravity manipulation: Level 1 (10-3 to 10-5 G at greater than 1 Hz) and Level 2 (less than equal 10-6 G at 0.1 Hz). This task included an evaluation of microstepping methods for controlling stepper motors and concluded that an industrial robot actuator can perform milli-G motion without modification. Relative merits of end-effectors and manipulators were studied in Task 3 in order to determine their ability to perform a range of tasks related to the three microgravity experiments. An Effectivity Rating was established for evaluating these robotic system capabilities. Preliminary interface requirements for an orbital flight demonstration were determined in Task 4. Task 5 assessed the impact of robotics

Recent finding and new technologies in nephrolithiasis: a review of the recent literature

This review summarizes recent literature on advances regarding renal and ureteral calculi, with particular focus in areas of recent advances in the overall field of urolithiasis. Clinical management in everyday practice requires a complete understanding of the issues regarding metabolic evaluation and subgrouping of stone-forming patients, diagnostic procedures, effective treatment regime in acute stone colic, medical expulsive therapy, and active stone removal. In this review we focus on new perspectives in managing nephrolitihiasis and discuss recentadvances, including medical expulsive therapy, new technologies, and refinements of classical therapy such as shock wave lithotripsy, give a fundamental modification of nephrolithiasis management. Overall, this field appears to be the most promising, capable of new developments in ureterorenoscopy and percutaneous approaches. Further improvements are expected from robotic-assisted procedures, such as flexible robotics in ureterorenoscopy

A Survey on the Current Status and Future Challenges Towards Objective Skills Assessment in Endovascular Surgery

Minimally-invasive endovascular interventions have evolved rapidly over the past decade, facilitated by breakthroughs in medical imaging and sensing, instrumentation and most recently robotics. Catheter based operations are potentially safer and applicable to a wider patient population due to the reduced comorbidity. As a result endovascular surgery has become the preferred treatment option for conditions previously treated with open surgery and as such the number of patients undergoing endovascular interventions is increasing every year. This fact coupled with a proclivity for reduced working hours, results in a requirement for efficient training and assessment of new surgeons, that deviates from the “see one, do one, teach one” model introduced by William Halsted, so that trainees obtain operational expertise in a shorter period. Developing more objective assessment tools based on quantitative metrics is now a recognised need in interventional training and this manuscript reports the current literature for endovascular skills assessment and the associated emerging technologies. A systematic search was performed on PubMed (MEDLINE), Google Scholar, IEEXplore and known journals using the keywords, “endovascular surgery”, “surgical skills”, “endovascular skills”, “surgical training endovascular” and “catheter skills”. Focusing explicitly on endovascular surgical skills, we group related works into three categories based on the metrics used; structured scales and checklists, simulation-based and motion-based metrics. This review highlights the key findings in each category and also provides suggestions for new research opportunities towards fully objective and automated surgical assessment solutions

A gaze-contingent framework for perceptually-enabled applications in healthcare

Patient safety and quality of care remain the focus of the smart operating room of the future. Some of the most influential factors with a detrimental effect are related to suboptimal communication among the staff, poor flow of information, staff workload and fatigue, ergonomics and sterility in the operating room. While technological developments constantly transform the operating room layout and the interaction between surgical staff and machinery, a vast array of opportunities arise for the design of systems and approaches, that can enhance patient safety and improve workflow and efficiency. The aim of this research is to develop a real-time gaze-contingent framework towards a "smart" operating suite, that will enhance operator's ergonomics by allowing perceptually-enabled, touchless and natural interaction with the environment. The main feature of the proposed framework is the ability to acquire and utilise the plethora of information provided by the human visual system to allow touchless interaction with medical devices in the operating room. In this thesis, a gaze-guided robotic scrub nurse, a gaze-controlled robotised flexible endoscope and a gaze-guided assistive robotic system are proposed. Firstly, the gaze-guided robotic scrub nurse is presented; surgical teams performed a simulated surgical task with the assistance of a robot scrub nurse, which complements the human scrub nurse in delivery of surgical instruments, following gaze selection by the surgeon. Then, the gaze-controlled robotised flexible endoscope is introduced; experienced endoscopists and novice users performed a simulated examination of the upper gastrointestinal tract using predominately their natural gaze. Finally, a gaze-guided assistive robotic system is presented, which aims to facilitate activities of daily living. The results of this work provide valuable insights into the feasibility of integrating the developed gaze-contingent framework into clinical practice without significant workflow disruptions.Open Acces

Exploration of methods for in-hand slip detection with an event-based camera during pick-and-place motions

Pick-and-place motions executed by robotic arms are widely used in the industry and they need to be performed effectively and without errors, such as slips and grasp failures. Concretely, rotational slip may occur when the object is grasped away from its center of mass and may cause issues when placing it due to its change of orientation. In this thesis, this problem is tackled using an event-based camera, which is designed to trigger an input event only the change in illumination at a specific image location crosses a predefined threshold. This enables us to exclude redundant information from static parts of the scene and build systems with low latency, high dynamic range, high temporal resolution and low power consumption. The topic of slip detection in manipulation tasks using event-based cameras is novel. Only a handful of papers in the literature tackle this problem and most of them do not perform as large motions as this thesis considers, typical of pick-and-place scenarios. The main contributions of this work are the design of the data acquisition system and some exploration on data processing methods to infer properties of the scene (motion, slip, etc.) from the data acquired by the platform. In terms of the experiment setup, the event-based camera (DAVIS 346) is mounted to the robotic arm (Panda) with the designed reconfigurable camera mount, offering an external view of the contact between the object and the two-finger parallel gripper used as end-effector. With this setup some small sets of data were recorded, containing slip and non-slip cases during pick-and-place motions with different objects and backgrounds. Since this is an exploratory topic and data is therefore scarce, the approach to data processing consists of feature engineering. To this end, events are processed to investigate the usefulness of alternative representations, such as event histograms and optical flow, to detect slip. Concretely, the ratio between the events coming from the object and the whole image and the vertical absolute mean velocity of the object are considered as one-dimensional signals, which can be thresholded to determine whether a slip is happening or not. In order to discriminate the events related to the object from the background, several solutions are proposed and compared. The results show that indeed, both signals are informative for slip detection, present- ing some limitations to generalize for different objects and backgrounds. In the end, some possible solutions to the detailed limitations are propose

Exploration of methods for in-hand slip detection with an event-based camera during pick-and-place motions

Pick-and-place motions executed by robotic arms are widely used in the industry and they need to be performed effectively and without errors, such as slips and grasp failures. Concretely, rotational slip may occur when the object is grasped away from its center of mass and may cause issues when placing it due to its change of orientation. In this thesis, this problem is tackled using an event-based camera, which is designed to trigger an input event only the change in illumination at a specific image location crosses a predefined threshold. This enables us to exclude redundant information from static parts of the scene and build systems with low latency, high dynamic range, high temporal resolution and low power consumption. The topic of slip detection in manipulation tasks using event-based cameras is novel. Only a handful of papers in the literature tackle this problem and most of them do not perform as large motions as this thesis considers, typical of pick-and-place scenarios. The main contributions of this work are the design of the data acquisition system and some exploration on data processing methods to infer properties of the scene (motion, slip, etc.) from the data acquired by the platform. In terms of the experiment setup, the event-based camera (DAVIS 346) is mounted to the robotic arm (Panda) with the designed reconfigurable camera mount, offering an external view of the contact between the object and the two-finger parallel gripper used as end-effector. With this setup some small sets of data were recorded, containing slip and non-slip cases during pick-and-place motions with different objects and backgrounds. Since this is an exploratory topic and data is therefore scarce, the approach to data processing consists of feature engineering. To this end, events are processed to investigate the usefulness of alternative representations, such as event histograms and optical flow, to detect slip. Concretely, the ratio between the events coming from the object and the whole image and the vertical absolute mean velocity of the object are considered as one-dimensional signals, which can be thresholded to determine whether a slip is happening or not. In order to discriminate the events related to the object from the background, several solutions are proposed and compared. The results show that indeed, both signals are informative for slip detection, present- ing some limitations to generalize for different objects and backgrounds. In the end, some possible solutions to the detailed limitations are proposed.Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::7 - Energia Assequible i No Contaminant::7.1 - Per a 2030, garantir l’accés universal a serveis d’energia assequibles, confiables i modern