Reconfigurable Fiducial-Integrated Modular Needle Driver For MRI-Guided Percutaneous Interventions

Needle-based interventions are pervasive in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), and are often used in a number of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, including biopsy and brachytherapy seed placement. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which can provide high quality, real time and high soft tissue contrast imaging, is an ideal guidance tool for image-guided therapy (IGT). Therefore, a MRI-guided needle-based surgical robot proves to have great potential in the application of percutaneous interventions. Presented here is the design of reconfigurable fiducial-integrated modular needle driver for MRI-guided percutaneous interventions. Further, an MRI-compatible hardware control system has been developed and enhanced to drive piezoelectric ultrasonic motors for a previously developed base robot designed to support the modular needle driver. A further contribution is the development of a fiber optic sensing system to detect robot position and joint limits. A transformer printed circuit board (PCB) and an interface board with integrated fiber optic limit sensing have been developed and tested to integrate the robot with the piezoelectric actuator control system designed by AIM Lab for closed loop control of ultrasonic Shinsei motors. A series of experiments were performed to evaluate the feasibility and accuracy of the modular needle driver. Bench top tests were conducted to validate the transformer board, fiber optic limit sensing and interface board in a lab environment. Finally, the whole robot control system was tested inside the MRI room to evaluate its MRI compatibility and stability

Automation and robotics for the Space Exploration Initiative: Results from Project Outreach

A total of 52 submissions were received in the Automation and Robotics (A&R) area during Project Outreach. About half of the submissions (24) contained concepts that were judged to have high utility for the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and were analyzed further by the robotics panel. These 24 submissions are analyzed here. Three types of robots were proposed in the high scoring submissions: structured task robots (STRs), teleoperated robots (TORs), and surface exploration robots. Several advanced TOR control interface technologies were proposed in the submissions. Many A&R concepts or potential standards were presented or alluded to by the submitters, but few specific technologies or systems were suggested

Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems: lifesaving/lethal scenarios for naval operations

Prepared for: Raytheon Missiles & Defense under NCRADA-NPS-19-0227This research in Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems applies precepts of Network Optional Warfare (NOW) to develop a three-step Mission Execution Ontology (MEO) methodology for validating, simulating, and implementing mission orders for unmanned systems. First, mission orders are represented in ontologies that are understandable by humans and readable by machines. Next, the MEO is validated and tested for logical coherence using Semantic Web standards. The validated MEO is refined for implementation in simulation and visualization. This process is iterated until the MEO is ready for implementation. This methodology is applied to four Naval scenarios in order of increasing challenges that the operational environment and the adversary impose on the Human-Machine Team. The extent of challenge to Ethical Control in the scenarios is used to refine the MEO for the unmanned system. The research also considers Data-Centric Security and blockchain distributed ledger as enabling technologies for Ethical Control. Data-Centric Security is a combination of structured messaging, efficient compression, digital signature, and document encryption, in correct order, for round-trip messaging. Blockchain distributed ledger has potential to further add integrity measures for aggregated message sets, confirming receipt/response/sequencing without undetected message loss. When implemented, these technologies together form the end-to-end data security that ensures mutual trust and command authority in real-world operational environments—despite the potential presence of interfering network conditions, intermittent gaps, or potential opponent intercept. A coherent Ethical Control approach to command and control of unmanned systems is thus feasible. Therefore, this research concludes that maintaining human control of unmanned systems at long ranges of time-duration and distance, in denied, degraded, and deceptive environments, is possible through well-defined mission orders and data security technologies. Finally, as the human role remains essential in Ethical Control of unmanned systems, this research recommends the development of an unmanned system qualification process for Naval operations, as well as additional research prioritized based on urgency and impact.Raytheon Missiles & DefenseRaytheon Missiles & Defense (RMD).Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Maggie: A Social Robot as a Gaming Platform

Edutainment robots are robots designed to participate in people's education and in their entertainment. One of the tasks of edutainment robots is to play with their human partners, but most of them offer a limited pool of games. Moreover, it is difficult to add new games to them. This lack of flexibility could shorten their life cycle. This paper presents a social robot on which several robotic games have been developed. Our robot uses a flexible and modular architecture that allows the creation of new skills by the composition of existing and simpler skills. With this architecture, the development of a new game mainly consists in the composition of the skills that are needed for this specific game. In this paper, we present the robot, its hardware and its software architecture, including its interaction capabilities. We also provide a detailed description of the development of five of the games the robot can play.The authors gratefully acknowledge the funds provided by the Spanish MICINN (Ministry of Science and Innovation) through the project "A new Approach to Social Robotics (AROS)". The research leading to these results has also received funding from the RoboCity2030-II-CM project(S2009/DPI-1559), funded by Programas de Actividades I+D en la Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds ofthe EU

Integração contínua no 5GASP

The wide adoption of an NFV-oriented paradigm by network operators proves the importance of NFV in the future of communication networks. This paradigm allows network operators to speed up the development process of their services, decoupling hardware from the functionalities provided by these services. However, since NFV has only been recently globally adopted, several questions and difficulties arose. Network operators need to ensure the reliability and the correct behavior of their Virtualized Network Functions, which poses severe challenges. Thus, the need for developing new validation tools, which are capable of validating network functions that live in an NFV ecosystem. 5GASP is a European project which aims to shorten the idea-to-market process by creating a fully automated and selfservice 5G testbed and providing support tools for Continuous Integration in a secure and trusted environment, addressing the DevOps paradigm. Being aligned with 5GASP’s goals, this dissertation mainly addresses the development of tools to validate NetApps. To accomplish this, this document introduces two different mechanisms for validating NetApps. The first tool is responsible for statically validate the NetApps before they are deployed in 5GASP’s testbeds, being denominated by NetApp Package Validator. Regarding this tool, during this document the focus is its Descriptors Validator Module, which validates the NetApp descriptors through syntactic, semantics, and reference validation and supports NetApps developed according to different Information Models. The second tool comprises an automated validation pipeline. This pipeline validates the functionality and the behavior of the NetApps once they are deployed in a 5G-testbed. Besides, it collects several metrics to enable a better understanding of the NetApp’s behavior. Both tools are expected to be integrated with the 5GASP’s ecosystem. This document presents the requirements definition, architecture, and implementation of these tools and presents their results and outputs.The wide adoption of an NFV-oriented paradigm by network operators proves the importance of NFV in the future of communication networks. This paradigm allows network operators to speed up the development process of their services, decoupling hardware from the functionalities provided by these services. However, since NFV has only been recently globally adopted, several questions and difficulties arose. Network operators need to ensure the reliability and the correct behavior of their Virtualized Network Functions, which poses severe challenges. Thus, the need for developing new validation tools, which are capable of validating network functions that live in an NFV ecosystem. 5GASP is a European project which aims to shorten the idea-to-market process by creating a fully automated and selfservice 5G testbed and providing support tools for Continuous Integration in a secure and trusted environment, addressing the DevOps paradigm. Being aligned with 5GASP’s goals, this dissertation mainly addresses the development of tools to validate NetApps. To accomplish this, this document introduces two different mechanisms for validating NetApps. The first tool is responsible for statically validate the NetApps before they are deployed in 5GASP’s testbeds, being denominated by NetApp Package Validator. Regarding this tool, during this document the focus is its Descriptors Validator Module, which validates the NetApp descriptors through syntactic, semantics, and reference validation and supports NetApps developed according to different Information Models. The second tool comprises an automated validation pipeline. This pipeline validates the functionality and the behavior of the NetApps once they are deployed in a 5G-testbed. Besides, it collects several metrics to enable a better understanding of the NetApp’s behavior. Both tools are expected to be integrated with the 5GASP’s ecosystem. This document presents the requirements definition, architecture, and implementation of these tools and presents their results and outputs.Mestrado em Engenharia Informátic

What is Robotics: Why Do We Need It and How Can We Get It?

Robotics is an emerging synthetic science concerned with programming work. Robot technologies are quickly advancing beyond the insights of the existing science. More secure intellectual foundations will be required to achieve better, more reliable and safer capabilities as their penetration into society deepens. Presently missing foundations include the identification of fundamental physical limits, the development of new dynamical systems theory and the invention of physically grounded programming languages. The new discipline needs a departmental home in the universities which it can justify both intellectually and by its capacity to attract new diverse populations inspired by the age old human fascination with robots. For more information: Kod*la

Developing an Autonomous Mobile Robotic Device for Monitoring and Assisting Older People

A progressive increase of the elderly population in the world has required technological solutions capable of improving the life prospects of people suffering from senile dementias such as Alzheimer's. Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) in the research field of elderly care is a solution that can ensure, through observation and monitoring of behaviors, their safety and improve their physical and cognitive health. A social robot can autonomously and tirelessly monitor a person daily by providing assistive tasks such as remembering to take medication and suggesting activities to keep the assisted active both physically and cognitively. However, many projects in this area have not considered the preferences, needs, personality, and cognitive profiles of older people. Moreover, other projects have developed specific robotic applications making it difficult to reuse and adapt them on other hardware devices and for other different functional contexts. This thesis presents the development of a scalable, modular, multi-tenant robotic application and its testing in real-world environments. This work is part of the UPA4SAR project ``User-centered Profiling and Adaptation for Socially Assistive Robotics''. The UPA4SAR project aimed to develop a low-cost robotic application for faster deployment among the elderly population. The architecture of the proposed robotic system is modular, robust, and scalable due to the development of functionality in microservices with event-based communication. To improve robot acceptance the functionalities, enjoyed through microservices, adapt the robot's behaviors based on the preferences and personality of the assisted person. A key part of the assistance is the monitoring of activities that are recognized through deep neural network models proposed in this work. The final experimentation of the project carried out in the homes of elderly volunteers was performed with complete autonomy of the robotic system. Daily care plans customized to the person's needs and preferences were executed. These included notification tasks to remember when to take medication, tasks to check if basic nutrition activities were accomplished, entertainment and companionship tasks with games, videos, music for cognitive and physical stimulation of the patient