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

Increasing Transparency and Presence of Teleoperation Systems Through Human-Centered Design

Teleoperation allows a human to control a robot to perform dexterous tasks in remote, dangerous, or unreachable environments. A perfect teleoperation system would enable the operator to complete such tasks at least as easily as if he or she was to complete them by hand. This ideal teleoperator must be perceptually transparent, meaning that the interface appears to be nearly nonexistent to the operator, allowing him or her to focus solely on the task environment, rather than on the teleoperation system itself. Furthermore, the ideal teleoperation system must give the operator a high sense of presence, meaning that the operator feels as though he or she is physically immersed in the remote task environment. This dissertation seeks to improve the transparency and presence of robot-arm-based teleoperation systems through a human-centered design approach, specifically by leveraging scientific knowledge about the human motor and sensory systems. First, this dissertation aims to improve the forward (efferent) teleoperation control channel, which carries information from the human operator to the robot. The traditional method of calculating the desired position of the robot\u27s hand simply scales the measured position of the human\u27s hand. This commonly used motion mapping erroneously assumes that the human\u27s produced motion identically matches his or her intended movement. Given that humans make systematic directional errors when moving the hand under conditions similar to those imposed by teleoperation, I propose a new paradigm of data-driven human-robot motion mappings for teleoperation. The mappings are determined by having the human operator mimic the target robot as it autonomously moves its arm through a variety of trajectories in the horizontal plane. Three data-driven motion mapping models are described and evaluated for their ability to correct for the systematic motion errors made in the mimicking task. Individually-fit and population-fit versions of the most promising motion mapping model are then tested in a teleoperation system that allows the operator to control a virtual robot. Results of a user study involving nine subjects indicate that the newly developed motion mapping model significantly increases the transparency of the teleoperation system. Second, this dissertation seeks to improve the feedback (afferent) teleoperation control channel, which carries information from the robot to the human operator. We aim to improve a teleoperation system a teleoperation system by providing the operator with multiple novel modalities of haptic (touch-based) feedback. We describe the design and control of a wearable haptic device that provides kinesthetic grip-force feedback through a geared DC motor and tactile fingertip-contact-and-pressure and high-frequency acceleration feedback through a pair of voice-coil actuators mounted at the tips of the thumb and index finger. Each included haptic feedback modality is known to be fundamental to direct task completion and can be implemented without great cost or complexity. A user study involving thirty subjects investigated how these three modalities of haptic feedback affect an operator\u27s ability to control a real remote robot in a teleoperated pick-and-place task. This study\u27s results strongly support the utility of grip-force and high-frequency acceleration feedback in teleoperation systems and show more mixed effects of fingertip-contact-and-pressure feedback

Computer-assisted access to the kidney

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this paper is to introduce the principles of computer-assisted access to the kidney. The system provides the surgeon with a pre-operative 3D planning on computed tomography (CT) images. After a rigid registration with space-localized ultrasound (US) data, preoperative planning can be transferred to the intra-operative conditions and an intuitive man-machine interface allows the user to perform a puncture. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Both CT and US images of informed normal volunteer were obtained to perform calculation on the accuracy of registration and punctures were carried out on a kidney phantom to measure the precision of the whole of the system. RESULTS: We carried out millimetric registrations on real data and guidance experiments on a kidney phantom showed encouraging results of 4.7 mm between planned and reached targets. We noticed that the most significant error was related to the needle deflection during the puncture. CONCLUSION: Preliminary results are encouraging. Further work will be undertaken to improve efficiency and accuracy, and to take breathing into account

On the Use of Large Area Tactile Feedback for Contact Data Processing and Robot Control

The progress in microelectronics and embedded systems has recently enabled the realization of devices for robots functionally similar to the human skin, providing large area tactile feedback over the whole robot body. The availability of such kind of systems, commonly referred to as extit{robot skins}, makes possible to measure the contact pressure distribution applied on the robot body over an arbitrary area. Large area tactile systems open new scenarios on contact processing, both for control and cognitive level processing, enabling the interpretation of physical contacts. The contents proposed in this thesis address these topics by proposing techniques exploiting large area tactile feedback for: (i) contact data processing and classification; (ii) robot control

Retention of Proprioceptive Recalibration Following Visuomotor Adaptation

This thesis builds on our laboratory’s recent findings that visuomotor adaptation following reaches with a misaligned cursor not only induces changes in an individual's motor output, but their proprioceptive sense of hand position as well. Long-term changes are seen in motor adaptation, however very little is known about the retention of changes in felt hand position. We sought to evaluate whether this recalibration in proprioception, following visuomotor adaptation, is sufficiently robust to be retained the following day (~24 hours later), and if so, to determine its extent. Visuomotor adaptation was induced by having subjects perform reaches to visual targets using a cursor representing their unseen hand, which had been gradually rotated 45º counterclockwise. Motor adaptation and proprioceptive recalibration were determined by assessing subjects’ reach aftereffects and changes in hand bias, respectively. We found that subjects adapted their reaches and recalibrated their sense of hand position following training with a misaligned cursor, as shown in Cressman and Henriques (2009). More importantly, subjects who showed proprioceptive recalibration in the direction of motor adaptation on Day 1 did retain changes in felt hand position and motor adaptation on Day 2. These findings suggest that in addition to motor changes, individuals are capable of retaining sensory changes in proprioception up to 24 hours later

Sensory Communication

Contains table of contents for Section 2, an introduction and reports on twelve research projects.National Institutes of Health Grant 5 R01 DC00117National Institutes of Health Contract 2 P01 DC00361National Institutes of Health Grant 5 R01 DC00126National Institutes of Health Grant R01-DC00270U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research Contract AFOSR-90-0200National Institutes of Health Grant R29-DC00625U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-88-K-0604U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-91-J-1454U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-92-J-1814U.S. Navy - Naval Training Systems Center Contract N61339-93-M-1213U.S. Navy - Naval Training Systems Center Contract N61339-93-C-0055U.S. Navy - Naval Training Systems Center Contract N61339-93-C-0083U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-92-J-4005U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-93-1-119