Building safer robots: Safety driven control

In recent years there has been a concerted effort to address many of the safety issues associated with physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). However, a number of challenges remain. For personal robots, and those intended to operate in unstructured environments, the problem of safety is compounded. In this paper we argue that traditional system design techniques fail to capture the complexities associated with dynamic environments. We present an overview of our safety-driven control system and its implementation methodology. The methodology builds on traditional functional hazard analysis, with the addition of processes aimed at improving the safety of autonomous personal robots. This will be achieved with the use of a safety system developed during the hazard analysis stage. This safety system, called the safety protection system, will initially be used to verify that safety constraints, identified during hazard analysis, have been implemented appropriately. Subsequently it will serve as a high-level safety enforcer, by governing the actions of the robot and preventing the control layer from performing unsafe operations. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the design, a series of experiments have been conducted using a MobileRobots PeopleBot. Finally, results are presented demonstrating how faults injected into a controller can be consistently identified and handled by the safety protection system. © The Author(s) 2012

Primary colon adenocarcinoma with metastatic disease to the rectum followed by the left axilla

Introduction Adenocarcinoma of the colon can metastasize to multiple organs but very rarely metastasizes to the axilla. Case We present a case of a 56-year-old male with metastatic colon adenocarcinoma that metastasized to the rectum and then the axilla. Three years after initial diagnosis and treatment of right colon mucinous adenocarcinoma a metastatic mass was found in the rectum. The mass was successfully resected, but within a year of finding the rectal mass, metastatic disease to the axilla was discovered. Conclusion This case provides valuable teaching points about routes of metastasis and the importance of continued clinical follow-up in patients diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the colon

Adenocarcinoma of the Cecum with Rare Splenic Metastasis

Isolated splenic metasisis is a rare finding in colorectal carcinoma. We report a case of metastatic cecal adenocarcinoma to the spleen. In spring 2011, a 53-yearold woman underwent en bloc right hemicolectomy with partial omentectomy. The tumor was Stage III pT3 pN2a M0. She received four months of modified FOLFOX6 chemotherapy and one month of capecitabine. In spring 2012, a PET/CT revealed a low attenuation focus in the spleen consistent with metastatic adenocarcinoma, so she underwent splenectomy. Additional imaging has revealed no disease recurrence. There are only a small number of case reports for isolated splenic metastasis; thus, no standardized treatment course has been developed

Experiences with an Architecture for Intelligent, Reactive Agents

This paper briefly describes a robot architecture that has been under development for the last eightyears. This architecture uses several levels of abstraction and description languages that are compatible between levels. The makeup of the architecture helps to coordinate planful activities with real-time behaviors for dealing with dynamic environments. In recent years