Medical Robotics And Robotic Prosthetic Devices

The challenge of medical robotics Our themes for this issue are ‘‘Medical robotics and robotic prosthetic devices’’. In a world of uncertainties I consider that a bright future for this field is about as certain as you can get. The principal properties of industrial robots that we have strived to improve are their speed and accuracy and to a lesser extent their load carrying capacity or strength. Medical robots are normally grouped under the ‘‘service robots’’ umbrella where accuracy and speed are low down on the priority list. However, I would argue that medical robots have far more in common with their industrial brethren than they do with the cleaning, carrying and communicating machines that are also called service robots. This view is easy to defend and is supported by the simple observation that many medical robots (e.g. RoboDoc) are based on industrial robots, albeit with additional safety precautions. Medical robotics is however, a very specialised field with additional demands that take robots well beyond what is required by the great majority of industrial applications. Speed of gross movement is not normally of concern but the ability to work with high precision and to respond quickly to surgeons commands or sensor feedback is paramount. Teleoperation and force feedback are also major areas of development. It does not matter (too much) if the surgeon is a few metres from the patient or in a different continent, the requirements for easy, intuitive control of the master manipulator and for accessible feedback of visual and tactile information are all important. This issue also includes ‘‘robotic prosthetic devices’’ and while some may argue that anything short of RoboCop mechanisation is not really robotic, I consider that work such as that by Hugh Herr of MIT’s Leg Lab (see pp. 42-55 in this issue) is easily justified in using this title. Clever and reprogrammable mechanical design is at the heart of robotics and in my view this area of technology will actually benefit from having to work within our present limitations of battery power and electric motor efficiencies. At the recent ISR in Stockholm (8-10 October 2002) I watched a keynote presentation by Professor Rodney Brooks which included a film of Hugh Herr’s prosthetic leg in action. The expression on the face of lady who tried it out for the first time and was able to walk up and down stairs with a natural gait, was sufficient on its own to validate the work and show the potential for this and other prosthetic devices. Many students jump on the bandwagon of ‘‘projects for the disabled’’ and with very good intentions, but it is rare for such work to provide such potential for improvement in the quality of life of disabled people. I only hope that this and similar work receives the necessary funding to attain commercial reality. Clive Loughlin Previously published in: Industrial Robot: An