Keywords: Hardware , Cable drive system

Article not relevant for PhD project, only the illustrations of the Z-KAT cable drive system are nice

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Comment on Surgery today:

Surgery today is primarily accomplished in an open, invasive manner, with significant potential damage to the patient?s tissues and other vital structures. Other complications such as blood loss, higher infection rates and the need for a second or third revision surgery can be attributed to the open nature of most surgeries, as well as the reliance on the art and skill of a specific surgeon. Surgery also takes a significant amount of costly operating room time, and can expose the patient to additional hazards such as excessive intra-operative x-ray (required when a surgeon needs to visualize his/her instruments and implants in the body in real time).


Products of Z-KAT:
Root arm: WAM (Whole Arm Manipulator)
Visualizarion Software to create 2D and 3D volumetric images of the patient's anatomy: Voyager and FluoroLab Plus

The software itself is knowledge that exists in computer space. The transition to the real world can occur in two ways:

1. Advanced instruments that are tracked by optical and magnetic sensors but are held and navigated by a human (like a video game)
2. Using robotics. This is the most promising technique to create highly accurate processes that can be replicated in any medical center around the world, regardless of the skill of the surgeon or system operator.

Early attempts at the introduction of robots into the operation room failed because they literally transferred standard industrial robots into an extremely complex, unstructured, and utterly human environment.

Drawbacks of completely autonomous robots:
- computing power is still several decades away from the cognitive insight a robot requires to deal with the delicate human body
- OR environment is complex
- surgeons distrust and fear machines that completely take over their practices
Therefore: robot and human must cooperate

The WAM is described in the article: robot arm, highly accurate precision, works with a back-drivable cable-drive differential system, provides haptics, intuitive interface, linked to the Voyager workstation.

WAM: originally developed by Dr Kenneth Salisbury and Dr William Townsend in the same laboratory as the PHANToM (MIT's AI Laboratory). Dr. Salisbury subsequently helped to found Intuitive Systems (the developers of the DaVinci system).

Comparison between WAM and DaVinci:
- DaVinci: costly, large, tele-operated, master-slave setup separates the surgeon from the operative field
- WAM: operates as master and slave simultaneously allowing the surgeon to work at the operative field, low cost

The WAM and the DaVinci systems are complementary, focusing on different markets, but are indicators of the state-of-the-art (along with Computer Motion?s Zeus and AESOP) robots in medical robotics.