关键词： Complications   Endometrial cancer   Laparoscopy   Outcomes   Robotics   Surgery  

摘要： Study Objective: To compare the rates of intraoperative and postoperative complications of robotic surgery and laparoscopy in the surgical treatment of endometrial cancer. Design: Unicentric retrospective study (Canadian Task Force classification II-2). Setting: Tertiary teaching hospital. Patients: The study was performed from January 2002 to December 2011 and included patients with endometrial cancer who underwent laparoscopic or robotically assisted laparoscopic surgical treatment. Data collected included preoperative data, tumor characteristics, intraoperative data (route of surgery, surgical procedures, and complications), and postoperative data (early and late complications according to the Clavien-Dindo classification, and length of hospital stay). Morbidity was compared between the 2 groups. Measurements and Main Results: The study included 146 patients, of whom 106 underwent laparoscopy and 40 underwent robotically assisted surgery. The 2 groups were comparable in terms of demographic and preoperative data. Intraoperative complications occurred in 9.4% of patients who underwent laparoscopy and in none who underwent robotically assisted surgery (p = .06). There was no difference between the 2 groups in terms of postoperative events. Conclusion: Robotically assisted surgery is not associated with a significant difference in intraoperative and postoperative complications, even when there were no intraoperative complications of robotically assisted surgery. (C) 2014 AAGL. All rights reserved.

关键词： Optical flow   Robotics navigation   Unmanned aerial vehicles   Robotics sensing  

摘要： Optical flow has been widely used by insects and birds to support navigation functions. Such information has appealing capabilities for application to ground and aerial robots, especially for navigation and collision avoidance in urban or indoor areas. The purpose of this paper is to provide a survey of existing optical flow techniques for robotics navigation applications. Detailed comparisons are made among different optical-flow-aided navigation solutions with emphasis on the sensor hardware as well as optical flow motion models. A summary of current research status and future research directions are further discussed.

关键词： Raman spectroscopy   fiber probe   tissue diagnostics   surgical robotics   medical optics  

摘要： We report the development of a fiber-based Raman sensor to be used in tumour margin identification during endoluminal robotic surgery. Although this is a generic platform, the sensor we describe was adapted for the ARAKNES (Array of Robots Augmenting the KiNematics of Endoluminal Surgery) robotic platform. On such a platform, the Raman sensor is intended to identify ambiguous tissue margins during robot-assisted surgeries. To maintain sterility of the probe during surgical intervention, a disposable sleeve was specially designed. A straightforward user-compatible interface was implemented where a supervised multivariate classification algorithm was used to classify different tissue types based on specific Raman fingerprints so that it could be used without prior knowledge of spectroscopic data analysis. The protocol avoids inter-patient variability in data and the sensor system is not restricted for use in the classification of a particular tissue type. Representative tissue classification assessments were performed using this system on excised tissue. ((c) 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

关键词： ROBOTS   ALGORITHMS   ROBOT motion  

摘要： The article introduces topics within the issue including the coverage of central problems in algorithmic robotics such as aspects of singlerobot and multi-robot motion planning, the collision-free motion planning, and the results for versions of minimum constraint removal (MCR) problem.

关键词： TELEPRESENCE   ROBOTS -- Evaluation  

摘要： The article evaluates the Double telepresence robot from Double Robotics.

关键词： NASA  

摘要： This paper presents the lessons learned from six years of experiments with planetary rover prototypes running the Service Oriented Robotic Architecture (SORA) developed by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at the NASA Ames Research Center. SORA relies on proven software engineering methods and technologies applied to space robotics. Based on a service oriented architecture and robust middleware, SORA encompasses onboard robot control and a full suite of software tools necessary for remotely operated exploration missions. SORA has been field-tested in numerous scenarios of robotic lunar and planetary exploration. The experiments conducted by IRG with SORA exercise a large set of the constraints encountered in space applications: remote robotic assets, flight-relevant science instruments, distributed operations, high network latencies, and unreliable or intermittent communication links. In this paper, we present the results of these field tests in regard to the developed architecture, and we discuss its benefits and limitations.

关键词： Swarm robotics   Foraging   Self-organization   Task allocation   Swarm intelligence   Multi-agent systems  

摘要： In this article we present a self-organized method for allocating the individuals of a robot swarm to tasks that are sequentially interdependent. Tasks that are sequentially interdependent are common in natural and artificial systems. The proposed method does neither rely on global knowledge nor centralized components. Moreover, it does not require the robots to communicate. The method is based on the delay experienced by the robots working on one subtask when waiting for input from another subtask. We explore the capabilities of the method in different simulated environments. Additionally, we evaluate the method in a proof-of-concept experiment using real robots. We show that the method allows a swarm to reach a near-optimal allocation in the studied environments, can easily be transferred to a real robot setting, and is adaptive to changes in the properties of the tasks such as their duration. Finally, we show that the ideal setting of the parameters of the method does not depend on the properties of the environment.

关键词： 柔性机器人   动力学建模   斜碰撞   摩擦   数值仿真  

摘要： 柔性机器人系统的接触碰撞动力学是一种非定常、瞬时发生、变边界、非线性的动力学,而含摩擦的斜碰撞包含了法向碰撞力和切向摩擦力的耦合。如何判断接触碰撞的物体之间的状态(滑动或粘滞)是研究接触碰撞的难点。物体之间摩擦状态的转换准则已成为国内外研究接触碰撞的热点问题。本文在此研究的基础上,对柔性机器人系统含摩擦的斜碰撞做出了创新性研究。本文研究的柔性机器人系统是由n个转动铰和n个柔性杆件组成的空间柔性机器人多杆链式系统。运用齐次坐标、齐次变换矩阵、假设模态法以及第二类拉格朗日方程等建立柔性机器人系统动力学方程；采用接触约束法、Coulomb摩擦定律、违约修正方法等建立了柔性机器人变拓扑系统斜碰撞动力学方程,此方程考虑摩擦效应且包含碰撞过程中摩擦状态的判定。再采用C++语言编制计算程序,计算算例,将结果与已知文献数据和已知模型做比较。通过上述的数据对比,验证本文所建柔性机器人系统模型的正确性、合理性、有效性、精确性。

摘要： Closed kinematic loops occur in many different robotic systems. Simply grasping an object with two or more arms, generates a closed kinematic loop. Recently, ESA commissioned a feasibility study for the deorbiting of Europe’s largest earth observing satellite – Envisat. It is expected that multiple arms are needed in order to grasp this satellite, which would generate a closed kinematic loop. The German Aerospace Center DLR would like to contribute to this feasibility study and simulate the deorbiting of Envisat. The SpaceDynamics Library, a simulation environment of the DLR, is however incapable to simulate robots with closed kinematic loops. The thesis discusses the dynamic modeling of robots with closed kinematic loops and shows the implementation and validation of an algorithm, in order to enable the dynamic modeling of closed loops with the SpaceDynamics Library.