111 research outputs found
Dynamic Active Constraints for Surgical Robots using Vector Field Inequalities
Robotic assistance allows surgeons to perform dexterous and tremor-free
procedures, but robotic aid is still underrepresented in procedures with
constrained workspaces, such as deep brain neurosurgery and endonasal surgery.
In these procedures, surgeons have restricted vision to areas near the surgical
tooltips, which increases the risk of unexpected collisions between the shafts
of the instruments and their surroundings. In this work, our
vector-field-inequalities method is extended to provide dynamic
active-constraints to any number of robots and moving objects sharing the same
workspace. The method is evaluated with experiments and simulations in which
robot tools have to avoid collisions autonomously and in real-time, in a
constrained endonasal surgical environment. Simulations show that with our
method the combined trajectory error of two robotic systems is optimal.
Experiments using a real robotic system show that the method can autonomously
prevent collisions between the moving robots themselves and between the robots
and the environment. Moreover, the framework is also successfully verified
under teleoperation with tool-tissue interactions.Comment: Accepted on T-RO 2019, 19 Page
Autonomous Robotic Drilling System for Mice Cranial Window Creation: An Evaluation with an Egg Model
Robotic assistance for experimental manipulation in the life sciences is
expected to enable precise manipulation of valuable samples, regardless of the
skill of the scientist. Experimental specimens in the life sciences are subject
to individual variability and deformation, and therefore require autonomous
robotic control. As an example, we are studying the installation of a cranial
window in a mouse. This operation requires the removal of the skull, which is
approximately 300 um thick, to cut it into a circular shape 8 mm in diameter,
but the shape of the mouse skull varies depending on the strain of mouse, sex
and week of age. The thickness of the skull is not uniform, with some areas
being thin and others thicker. It is also difficult to ensure that the skulls
of the mice are kept in the same position for each operation. It is not
realistically possible to measure all these features and pre-program a robotic
trajectory for individual mice. The paper therefore proposes an autonomous
robotic drilling method. The proposed method consists of drilling trajectory
planning and image-based task completion level recognition. The trajectory
planning adjusts the z-position of the drill according to the task completion
level at each discrete point, and forms the 3D drilling path via constrained
cubic spline interpolation while avoiding overshoot. The task completion level
recognition uses a DSSD-inspired deep learning model to estimate the task
completion level of each discrete point. Since an egg has similar
characteristics to a mouse skull in terms of shape, thickness and mechanical
properties, removing the egg shell without damaging the membrane underneath was
chosen as the simulation task. The proposed method was evaluated using a 6-DOF
robotic arm holding a drill and achieved a success rate of 80% out of 20
trials.Comment: Accepted on IROS 2023, 8 page
UMIRobot: An Open-{Software, Hardware} Low-Cost Robotic Manipulator for Education
Robot teleoperation has been studied for the past 70 years and is relevant in
many contexts, such as in the handling of hazardous materials and telesurgery.
The COVID19 pandemic has rekindled interest in this topic, but the existing
robotic education kits fall short of being suitable for teleoperated robotic
manipulator learning. In addition, the global restrictions of motion motivated
large investments in online/hybrid education. In this work, a newly developed
robotics education kit and its ecosystem are presented which is used as the
backbone of an online/hybrid course in teleoperated robots. The students are
divided into teams. Each team designs, fabricates (3D printing and assembling),
and implements a control strategy for a master device and gripper. Coupling
those with the UMIRobot, provided as a kit, the students compete in a
teleoperation challenge. The kit is low cost (< 100USD), which allows
higher-learning institutions to provide one kit per student and they can learn
in a risk-free environment. As of now, 73 such kits have been assembled and
sent to course participants in eight countries. As major success stories, we
show an example of gripper and master designed for the proposed course. In
addition, we show a teleoperated task between Japan and Bangladesh executed by
course participants. Design files, videos, source code, and more information
are available at https://mmmarinho.github.io/UMIRobot/Comment: Accepted on IROS 2023, 8 page
Autonomous Coordinated Control of the Light Guide for Positioning in Vitreoretinal Surgery
Vitreoretinal surgery is challenging even for expert surgeons owing to the
delicate target tissues and the diminutive workspace in the retina. In addition
to improved dexterity and accuracy, robot assistance allows for (partial) task
automation. In this work, we propose a strategy to automate the motion of the
light guide with respect to the surgical instrument. This automation allows the
instrument's shadow to always be inside the microscopic view, which is an
important cue for the accurate positioning of the instrument in the retina. We
show simulations and experiments demonstrating that the proposed strategy is
effective in a 700-point grid in the retina of a surgical phantom. Furthermore,
we integrated the proposed strategy with image processing and succeeded in
positioning the surgical instrument's tip in the retina, relying on only the
robot's geometric information and microscopic images.Comment: Accepted on T-MRB 2022, 16 page
Single-Shot Pose Estimation of Surgical Robot Instruments' Shafts from Monocular Endoscopic Images
Surgical robots are used to perform minimally invasive surgery and alleviate
much of the burden imposed on surgeons. Our group has developed a surgical
robot to aid in the removal of tumors at the base of the skull via access
through the nostrils. To avoid injuring the patients, a collision-avoidance
algorithm that depends on having an accurate model for the poses of the
instruments' shafts is used. Given that the model's parameters can change over
time owing to interactions between instruments and other disturbances, the
online estimation of the poses of the instrument's shaft is essential. In this
work, we propose a new method to estimate the pose of the surgical instruments'
shafts using a monocular endoscope. Our method is based on the use of an
automatically annotated training dataset and an improved pose-estimation
deep-learning architecture. In preliminary experiments, we show that our method
can surpass state of the art vision-based marker-less pose estimation
techniques (providing an error decrease of 55% in position estimation, 64% in
pitch, and 69% in yaw) by using artificial images.Comment: Accepted on ICRA 2020, 7 page
Active Constraints using Vector Field Inequalities for Surgical Robots
Robotic assistance allows surgeons to perform dexterous and tremor-free
procedures, but is still underrepresented in deep brain neurosurgery and
endonasal surgery where the workspace is constrained. In these conditions, the
vision of surgeons is restricted to areas near the surgical tool tips, which
increases the risk of unexpected collisions between the shafts of the
instruments and their surroundings, in particular in areas outside the surgical
field-of-view. Active constraints can be used to prevent the tools from
entering restricted zones and thus avoid collisions. In this paper, a vector
field inequality is proposed that guarantees that tools do not enter restricted
zones. Moreover, in contrast with early techniques, the proposed method limits
the tool approach velocity in the direction of the forbidden zone boundary,
guaranteeing a smooth behavior and that tangential velocities will not be
disturbed. The proposed method is evaluated in simulations featuring two eight
degrees-of-freedom manipulators that were custom-designed for deep
neurosurgery. The results show that both manipulator-manipulator and
manipulator-boundary collisions can be avoided using the vector field
inequalities.Comment: Accepted on ICRA 2018, 8 page
Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences
The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & NemĂ©sio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; NemĂ©sio 2009aâb; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported
by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on
18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based
researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016
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