Robotics for Molecular Biologist, Huh Moment
I have had no background for the robotics. I even learnt what the Degree of Freedom (DOF) is in the last semester during one of the mandatory courses that I need to complete towards the coursework requirement of the PhD program. Welcome the world of interdisciplinary! I always think I am a hard core scientist as a molecular biologist and geneticist. After finishing my PhD, I will call myself as an engineer? Nope, sorry dear engineers, I am still planning to define myself as a scientist =)
Here are some challenges and some of my answers to those challenges from last semester (I have no idea whether they are true or not, you definitely need to check for the right answer).
Let’s think a robotic surgery that needs incision. What do you think the best option for DOF? Well, since I had very little robotics background that I earned in half semester (is it possible?), I did some literature search. Here is my answer for this question:
Although, human hand and wrist has a 7 degrees of freedom (DoF) for motion in full state provided by three joints, which are pitch, yaw, and roll for shoulder, pitch for elbow, pitch for wrist, yaw and roll, mimicking this in robots is a challenge. In addition, most of the robotics devices used in surgeries such as laryngoscope has 4 DoF, which are yaw, pitch, roll and move in out by human hand [1]. Early Da Vinci systems had 3 arms for different purposes to increase the motion capability and functionality, but newly added fourth arm is used to provide retraction in newer systems [2]. However, without sensing, all these technologies are not completed. So, haptic designs added into joints were developed such as 7 DoF haptic robots [3]. Despite the last one’s higher resemblance to human in the case of surgery, the requirement for degree of freedom of a robot depends on the purpose of the surgery [1][4][5][6]. In fact, the robotics technologies developed so far has several advantages and disadvantages due to this. Therefore, 6 DoF tendon-driven continuum robots might be enough for endoscopic surgeries [7]. To sum up, the DoF requirement depends on the aim of the robot, and the idea of the more like human shoulder-elbow-hand-sensing control the merrier the robot instead of the idea of higher the DoF the better the robot.
Hey engineers, do you like it? Does it make any sense to you? (If yes, glad I might have learnt something interdisciplinary!)
Before finishing my words, I would like share my little origami project snake with you which is independent from the rest of the post:
Can you guess the robot design I inspired for my little project?
References:
[1] Hillel AT, Kapoor A, Simaan N, Taylor RH, Flint P: (2008) Applications of robotics for laryngeal surgery, Otolaryngol Clin North Am, 41:781–791, vii.
[2] Herrell S.D. (2017) Robotic Surgery: Past, Present, and Future. In: Su LM. (eds) Atlas of Robotic Urologic Surgery. Springer, Cham
[3] Cristopher E. Marince (2015) Master Thesis: Design of a 7 DoF Haptic Robot
[4] Davies BL, Hibberd RD, Ng WS, Timoney AG, Wickham JE. (1991) The development of a surgeon robot for prostatectomies. Proc Inst Mech Eng H. ;205(1):35–8.
[5] Rucker DC, Jones BA, Webster RJ. (2010). A geometrically exact model for externally loaded concentric-tube continuum robots. IEEE Trans Robot. 26(5):769–80.
[6] Burgner J, Swaney PJ, Lathrop RA, Weaver KD, Webster RJ. (2013). Debulking from within: a robotic steerable cannula for intracerebral hemorrhage evacuation. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 60(9):2567–75.
[7] Li, M., Kang, R., Geng, S., and Guglielmino, E. (2017). Design and Control of a Tendon-Driven Continuum Robot. Trans. Inst. Meas. Control, 40(11), pp. 3263–3272. doi: 10.1177/0142331216685607
