APPLICATIONS OF ROBOTICS IN MEDICINE Seminar

[born_for seminars]

Abstract
Robots in medicine deserve enhanced attention, being a field where their instrumental ids enable exacting options. The availability of oriented effectors, capable to get into the human body with no or negligible impact, is challenge, evolving while micro-mechanics aims at nanotechnology. The survey addresses sets of known achievements, singling out noteworthy autonomous in body devices, either co-robotic surgical aids, in view of recognizing shared benefits or hindrances, to explore how to conceive effective tools, tailored to answer given demands, while remaining within established technologies.
Robotics for medical applications started fifteen years ago while for biological applications it is rather new (about five years old). Robotic surgery can accomplish what doctors cannot because of precision and repeatability of robotic systems. Besides, robots are able to operate in a contained space inside the human body. All these make robots especially suitable for non-invasive or minimally invasive surgery and for better outcomes of surgery. Today, robots have been demonstrated or routinely used for heart, brain, and spinal cord, throat, and knee surgeries at many hospitals in the United States (International Journal of Emerging Medical Technologies, 2005).
Nanorobotics is the still largely hypothetical technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometer(10-9meters). Also known as nanobots or nanites, they would be constructed from nanoscale or molecular components. So far, researchers have only been able to produce some parts of such a machine, such as bearings, sensors, and synthetic molecular motors, but they hope to be able to create entire robots as small as viruses or bacteria, which could perform tasks on a tiny scale. Possible applications include micro surgery (on the level of individual cells), utility fog, manufacturing, weaponry and cleaning. This presentation provides a survey of current developments, in the spirit of focusing the trends toward the said turn.


Introduction
Robotics is a field that has many exciting potential applications. It is also a field in which expectations of the public often do not match current realities. Truly incredible capabilities are being sought and demonstrated in research laboratories around the world. However, it is very difficult to build a mechanical device (e.g., a robotic arm) that has dexterity comparable to a human’s limbs. It is even more difficult to build a computer system that can perceive its environment, reason about the environment and the task at hand, and control a robotic arm with anything remotely approaching the capabilities of a human being.
History of robotics
The word robot (from the Czech word robota meaning compulsory labor) was defined by the Robotic Institute of America as “a machine in the form of a human being that performs the mechanical functions of a human being but lacks sensitivity.” One of the first robots developed was by Leonardo da Vinci in 1495; a mechanical armored knight that was used to amuse royalty. This was then followed by creation of the first operational robot by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, in which an automated loom, controlled by punch cards, created a reproducible pattern woven into cloth. Issac Asimov further elucidated the role of robotics in 1940 through short stories; however, it was his three laws of robotics that received popular acclaim. The three laws state1) A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm2)A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with First Law and 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law
Applications in Medicine
Robots are filling an increasingly important role of enhancing patient safety in the hurried pace of clinics and hospitals where attention to details and where reliability are essential. In recent years, robots are moving closer to patient care, compared with their previous role as providing services in the infrastructure of medicine. Examples of past use are in repetitive activities of cleaning floors and washing equipment and carrying hot meals to patients’ bedside. What is new is finding them in clinical laboratories identifying and measuring blood and other specimen for testing, and in pharmacies counting pills and delivering them to nurses on ‘med-surg-units’ or ICU’s. Or bringing banked blood from the laboratory to the ED, surgery, or ICU for transfusions. Robots are being used as very accurate ‘go-fors’!
An early active robot, ‘Robodoc’ was designed to mill perfectly round lumens in the shafts of fractured bones, to improve the bonding of metal replacements such as for femur heads, and knee joints. The future of this system remains uncertain because of questions about the ultimate beneficial outcomes.
The reasons behind the interest in the adoption of medical robots are multitudinous. Robots provide industry with something that is, to them, more valuable than even the most dedicated and hard-working employee - namely speed, accuracy, repeatability, reliability, and cost-efficiency. A robotic aid, for example, one that holds a viewing instrument for a surgeon, will not become fatigued, for however long it is used. It will position the instrument accurately with no tremor, and it will be able to perform just as well on the 100th occasion as it did on the first.