Planning and Real Time Control of a Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery System

This paper introduces the planning and control software of a teleoperating robotic system for minimally invasive surgery. It addresses the problem of how to organize a complex system with 41 degrees of freedom including robot setup planning, force feedback control and nullspace handling with three robotic arms. The planning software is separated into sequentially executed planning and registration procedures. An optimal setup is first planned in virtual reality and then adapted to variations in the operating room. The real time control system is composed of hierarchical layers. The design is flexible and expandable without losing performance. Structure, functionality and implementation of planning and control are described. The robotic system provides the surgeon with an intuitive hand-eye-coordination and force feedback in teleoperation for both hands

Small sample sizes : A big data problem in high-dimensional data analysis

Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to the Editor, Associate Editor and three anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions, which greatly improved the manuscript. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research is supported by the German Science Foundation awards number DFG KO 4680/3-2 and PA 2409/3-2.Peer reviewedPublisher PD