Abstract not found

This book presents a unified treatment of many different kinds of planning algorithms. The subject lies at the crossroads between robotics, control theory, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and computer graphics. The particular subjects covered include motion planning, discrete planning

Volume rendering is a technique for visualizing 3D arrays of sampled data. It has applications in areas such as medical imaging and scientific visualization, but its use has been limited by its high computational expense. Early implementations of volume rendering used brute-force techniques that require on the order of 100 seconds to render typical data sets on a workstation. Algorithms with optimizations that exploit coherence in the data have reduced rendering times to the range of ten seconds but are still not fast enough for interactive visualization applications. In this thesis we present a family of volume rendering algorithms that reduces rendering times to one second. First we present a scanline-order volume rendering algorithm that exploits coherence in both the volume data and the image. We show that scanline-order algorithms are fundamentally more efficient than commonly-used ray casting algorithms because the latter must perform analytic geometry calculations (e.g. intersecting rays with axis-aligned boxes). The new scanline-order algorithm simply streams through the volume and the image in storage order. We describe variants of the algorithm for both parallel and perspective projections and

Abstract—Many surgical procedures are now performed using the techniques of minimally invasive surgery (MIS), in which unnecessary trauma is limited by reducing the size of incisions to less than about 1 cm or by using catheters or endoscopes threaded through vessels, the gastrointestinal tract

In this paper, we describe an ongoing collaborative research project between the Universities of California at Berkeley and San Francisco with Endorobotics Corporation to develop milli-robotic tools for remote, minimally invasive surgery. We describe the limitations of current surgical practice

From a collaboration between the University of Paris 6 and the University of Genoa a miniature arm for minimally invasive surgery has been designed. The arm, specially suitable for suturing during heart surgery operations, is designed following a modular approach; the apparatus is formed by a

Abstract — Minimally invasive robotic surgery systems has entered daily practice in dedicated clinical centers. Especially heart surgery profits from this new technique, due to a higher accuracy compared to conventional endoscopic interventions. Nevertheless some drawbacks have restricted a broader

We present an experimental system for robot assisted, minimally invasive surgery that is capable of force measurement and haptic feedback. While minimally invasive surgery with robots provides several advantages like reduced tissue trauma and shorter recovery times, there are also some inherent

. This paper describes the development of actuated and sensorized instruments for minimally invasive robotic surgery which are a necessary prerequisite for haptic feedback. 1

Abstract—This paper introduces the planning and control software of a teleoperation system for research in minimally invasive robotic surgery. It addresses the problem of how to organize a complex system with 41 degrees of freedom as a flexible configurable platform. Robot setup planning, force