A minimally invasive surgery robotic assistant for HALS-SILS techniques.

This paper is focused in the design and implementation of a robotic surgical motion controller. The proposed control scheme addresses the issues related to the application of a robot assistant in novel surgical scenario, which combines hand assisted laparoscopic surgery (HALS) with the single incision laparoscopic surgery (SILS) techniques. It is designed for collaborating with the surgeon in a natural way, by performing autonomous movements, in order to assist the surgeon during a surgical maneuver. In this way, it is implemented a hierarchical architecture which includes an upper auto-guide velocity planner connected to a low-level force feedback controller. The first one, based on a behavior approach, computes a collision free trajectory of the surgical instrument tip, held by the robot, for reaching a goal location inside of the abdominal cavity. On the other hand, the force feedback controller uses this trajectory for performing the instrument displacement by taking into account the holonomic movement constraints introduced by the fulcrum point. The aim of this controller is positioning the surgical instrument by minimizing the forces exerted over the abdominal wall due to the fulcrum location uncertainty. The overall system has been integrated in the control architecture of the surgical assistant CISOBOT, designed and developed at the University of Malaga. The whole architecture performance has been tested by means of in vitro trials.

Object-oriented modeling and simulation of the closed loop cardiovascular system by using SIMSCAPE.

The modeling of physiological systems via mathematical equations reflects the calculation procedure more than the structure of the real system modeled, with the simulation environment SIMULINK™ being one of the best suited to this strategy. Nevertheless, object-oriented modeling is spreading in current simulation environments through the use of the individual components of the model and its interconnections to define the underlying dynamic equations. In this paper we describe the use of the SIMSCAPE™ simulation environment in the object-oriented modeling of the closed loop cardiovascular system. The described approach represents a valuable tool in the teaching of physiology for graduate medical students.