PRE2020 4 Group8

Team

Members	Student ID	Faculty	E-mail
Ismail Elmasry	1430807	Mechanical Engineering	i.elmasry@student.tue.nl
Ilse Doornbusch	1020872	Psychology and Technology	i.s.doornbusch@student.tue.nl
Amin Mimoun Bourass	1486764	Automotive	a.mimoun.bourass@student.tue.nl
Maud Kunkels	1320025	Industrial Engineering	m.f.kunkels@student.tue.nl

Logbook

The logbook and task division of the team can be found on the page Logbook Group 8

Subject

The field of Robotics and AI is developing increasingly fast. Robots are becoming smaller while their computation power increases. Microrobotics has become popular due to these developments. Microbots can be used in various applications, for example, healthcare, rescue missions and surveillance.

Problem statement and Objectives

Problem Statement

Microbots for rescue and actions taken inside the human body, dependent on the application (urban and healthcare field). The level of autonomy needs to be determined in both applications, taking into account its consequences and pro’s and cons for the relevant stakeholders and the society

Objectives

The objective is to maximize safety of either a (semi-)autonomous microbot in both the healthcare implementation of the microbots in which human-robot or multi-robot collaboration is optimized. The level of autonomy will be discussed and a design concept will be made. The requirements of healthcare microbot:

Requirements

• Controllable, the microbot should be human-controllable.
• Safe, the microbot should operate with safety as priority
• Durable, the microbot should be able to withstand the operating conditions
• Autonomy, the microbot should have some level of autonomy
• Multi-robot collaboration, the microbot should be able to communicate with other microbots and they should operate as a group

Contraints

• Size, the microbot for health should be small enough to travel in the human body.

USE

User

The target group for our microrobots consists of the patients in a hospital that require certain sensing and surgery to be performed inside their human body. In general, the users can of course be classified into all civilians since it cannot be predetermined whether a person might need surgery or health care. For the users safety is of high importance since they would like the robot to do their tasks in such a way that they are safely cured or rescued. When the tasks are carried out by the robots, the patients do not have responsibility about the actions taken and are therefore not in charge of their own body anymore. This can give the feelings of inconvenience for a patient as the caring of their body is displaced by a robot.(1) Many changes have already taken place in order to improve the quality delivered by healthcare services to contribute to the safety and health of human beings in hospitals. Examples are surgery systems with partial autonomy or social robots that are used to provide aids or drugs to patients. (2)

In the case that the microrobots will work semi-autonomously, the operators will be part of the users as well. These operators are then the doctors in the hospital that may tele-operate the robots. For them it is important that the human-robot clinical settings are well designed. (3) With reference to robot technology innovations, good human-robot interaction is determined to include some aspects and an barriers should be overcome. (4) The aspects that should be present for the user interface consist of awareness, efficiency, familiarity and responsiveness. The barrier is that the sensing and perception of the robot should match with that of a human being which implies that the sensors need to be shown such that the doctor will still have sufficient situational awareness to stay capable of making a good model of the environment. (4)

Society

Important stakeholders for the use of the microrobots are the medical personnel, hospitals and EMA (European Medicine Agency). Furthermore, it is relevant that the society accepts the technology and thus it needs to be checked whether people are willing to let such robots to the work. Especially the level of privacy for citizens need to be guaranteed since the robots are mobile and able to gather personal data such that the government also plays an important role in the implementation of the microrobots(1). Next to that, the acceptance of robot technology in healthcare is generally considered to have a low rate due to complications in human-robot interaction. Such complications include a fear of displacement by a robot, safety and appropriateness(1).

Enterprise

First of all, to make the design of a good microrobot to be used, experts in robotics and automation are required. Due to the fact that aspects influencing the innovation of robot technology do not stay the same over time, research needs to be continued on the technologies used and new adoptions should be made where possible. Accordingly, the capabilities and functionalities of technologies will evolve and this needs to be taken into account within the company or institution that will be in charge of the robots. Furthermore, when microrobots become able to perform the required actions fully autonomously, this will influence the number of jobs that will stay available within the healthcare services. Doctors might lose their job as human tasks will be replaced by the work done by robots.

Plan

A structured approach is needed to guide the team towards a valid answer to the research problem at hand. Therefore, the approach taken is not just limited to scientific research but also an attempt to solve a design problem.

Approach and milestones

1. Conduct research

In this objective the team conducts extensive research to find the state-of-the-art technologies in the field of medical micro-robotics. Furthermore, a summary of the research will be created to frame the most significant findings. This will allow the team to have a well-constructed Knowledge bases, which will be used in different parts of the research.

2. Design analysis

In this section the different design objects of microrobots will be defined and analyzed. This is important since it gives the team a well-rounded understanding of the design goals for both the hardware and the software.

3. Current technological Limitations

Medical microrobots that are being tested today are still subjectively primal when compared to the progress in the robotics domain. Therefore, the design, technology and engineering limitations will be investigated to define a design problem to attempt to solve.

4. Applications and autonomy level analysis

Medical microrobots have a large number of applications starting from drug delivery to surgical and all the way to DNA manipulation. Therefore, depending on the application different levels of autonomy are required and therefore, different use impacts. Therefore, a number of these applications will be carefully chosen to construct an abstract guide to the implementation of the USE analysis.

5. Experts’ views and arguments

Experts have different views on the deployment of microrobots and allowing them to be utilized to monitor and manipulate the human body. Therefore, the different pros and cons will be thoroughly analyzed in this section.

6. Impact of the technology on different stakeholders

In this section the psychological and physical impacts of this technology on different stakeholders will be addressed. This will allow the team to have a clear view on the societal impact of the technology.

7. Future possibilities and design implementation

In this section the team is given the possibility to have a creative outlook on the technology. This will allow the team to combine their imagination with objective reasoning to construct a design of a futuristic microrobot or attempt to solve one of the design problems discussed above.

Planning

Deliverables

The deliverables for this project will consist of a case study report on the technology, a USE case analysis on the impact of technology on different stakeholders, and last but not least a design/prototype of a micro-robot.

State of the Art

Implementation of Path Planning using Genetic Algorithms on Mobile Robots

Genetic algorithms are a possible solution to overcome the limitations of classical algorithms as they can cover a large search space and use a relatively low amount of memory and CPU resources

• However, they do not always find the global optimum, which is the shortest path

This paper demonstrates that genetic algorithms are also able to adapt a found solution to a continuously changing environment

Graphene-Based Microbots for Toxic Heavy Metal Removal and Recovery from Water

In this research, graphene oxide based microbots are demonstrated for very efficient removal of toxic heavy metal from contaminated water through several processes

The GOx-microbots can be deployed in contaminated water to swim randomly and easily collected using magnets once the water purification process has been completed

The use of active systems and graphene nanomaterials can pave the way for new functionalities of self-propelled micronanomotors, from drug delivery, sensing, and energy to new environmental applications

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The use of semi-autonomous micro-bots as search assets, have a tremendous return on investment potential for future disaster situations.

KNOBSAR expert system prototype > expert system application of specific domain knowledge for more efficient resource allocations that provides an excellent modelling fit for structural collapse simulation and mapping products because of the synergistic effect of their combination

• It can maximize a modeling effort’s impact by providing valuable advice in a user friendly manner

Although the robotic community has already accomplished much in the way of process optimization, effective allocation of autonomous mobile robots represents a much more demanding and elusive problem: in terms of polymorphic platforms and obstacle negotiation

The KNOBSAR (initial expert system prototype designed to interact with various structural collapse simulation packages and provide advice on search asset allocation to specific entry points within a crisis site) illustrates the KBS (knowledge-based system) role as an adaptive filter for tedious and routine management issues, thereby relieving management bottlenecks and allowing key leaders to concentrate on more complex and difficult decisions

Greatest advantage lies in the domain tailored degree of knowledge control > by acting as smart mechanical advisors, knowledge-based applications like these can be a tremendous asset for complex combat decision analysis – without the threat of subjugating man to machine logic

The human command element always retains the final authority for a decision

The KBS approach was chosen since:

• The need for rapid dissemination of knowledge oriented expertise is well established in the USAR community
  • Expert availability in the USAR environment is not only limited by bottlenecked processing and prolonged work shifts, but by disruption of transportation and communication networks as well.
    • The capability of a KBS to explain its rule-based solutions, and filter out all but the most complex problems in a user friendly manner can significantly reduce the time required to allocate resources while also minimizing fatigue and bottleneck effects for crisis site managers.
• The majority of USAR procedures are based on heuristics that are implicitly developed through years of experience and training as opposed to the strict application of statistical formulas and rigid algorithms
  • The complexities of structural collapse prediction fac- tors, combined with human behavior characteristics make rapid solutions from strict application of deep reasoning methods highly unlikely. Rescuers need the rapid, approximate solutions that are easily explained and modified by Knowledge-Based Systems in a dynamic environment

==Robotic Urban Search and Rescue: A Survey from the Control Perspective== Robotic urban search and rescue (USAR)

In order to minimize a robot operator’s workload in time-critical disaster scenes, recent efforts have been made to equip these robots with some level of autonomy

1) developing low-level controllers for rescue robot autonomy in traversing uneven terrain and stairs, and perception-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms for developing 3D maps of USAR scenes, 2) task sharing of multiple tasks between operator and robot via semi-autonomous control, and 3) high level control schemes that have been designed for multi-robot rescue teams

Teamwork is crucial, whether human-robot of multi-robot collaboration

Real-time task allocation techniques are needed to distribute tasks to rescue robots in a team in order to have multiple robots work effectively together to achieve the rescue tasks at hand

Effective user interface design for rescue robotics

The operator must cognitively place themselves in the same position as the robot

• First barrier comes from the robot often having a very different morphology to the human operator
  • A suitable mapping between what a human considers as intuitive movement must somehow translate to sensible movements in the robot
• Second barrier is that of sensing and perception as the operator is not in the same place as the robot and the sensors on the robot may not match those that a human is used to
  • Familiar sensors must be presented in a way that provides the operator with good situational awareness and allows them to form a good mental model of the environment

Specific attributes that define a good human-robot interface do not exist yet

• Principle from human-computer interaction research provide a starting point and emphasize the importance of interfaces that are visually and conceptually clear and comprehensible, aesthetically pleasing and compatible with the task at hand and the user
  • Awareness > operator should be presented with enough information to build a sufficiently complete mental model of the robot’s external state and internal state
  • Efficiency > as little movement as possible required in the hands, eyes and focus of attention
  • Familiarity > wherever possible, concepts that are already familiar to the operator should be adopted and unfamiliar concepts minimized or avoided. If necessary, information should be fused to allow for a more intuitive presentation to the operator
  • Responsiveness > the operator should always have feedback as to the success or failure of actions

State Of The Art: A Study of Human-Robot Interaction in Healthcare

Human-robot interaction in healthcare is faced with challenges such as the fear of displacement of caregivers by robots, safety, usefulness, acceptability as well as appropriateness > lead to a low rate of acceptance of the robotic technology

One of the major challenges confronting human-robot interaction is the loss of privacy as social robots are mobile, they act as social actors and they also have the ability to gather data

The robot can act autonomously or be teleoperated in an environment which means that it the robot is fully controlled by a human being

What is autonomous surgery and what are the latest developments?

Although fully autonomous surgery systems where human impact will be minimized are still a long way off, systems with partial autonomy have gradually entered clinical use. In this review, articles on autonomous surgery classified and summarized, with the aim of informing the reader about questions such as “What is autonomic surgery?”

Capsule endoscopy: past, present, and future

A popular example is the capsule endoscope (PillCam) system that moves passively through the digestive tract by peristaltic organ movement and wirelessly transmits image and data.

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Microbots: Micro-size, untethered robots that can move through the body and can perform target therapy, material removal, structural controlling, and sensing.

The effective design of human-robot clinical settings will require partnerships between experts in robotics and automation, human-computer interaction, cognitive sciences, as well as clinicians, caregivers, and psychologists. A limitation of this study is that factors influencing robot technology adoption are expected to change over time since the functionalities and capabilities of clinical robots are expected to continuously evolve. In this changing environment, standards and legal implications established by regulatory bodies will also need to evolve.

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Microbots for minimally invasive medicine

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20415589/

Potential impact of medical microrobots

Functions for microbots:

Targeted therapy Targeted drug delivery (reduces risks of side effects in other parts of the body) Brachytherapy is the placement of radioactive source or seed near a tumor Hyperthermia and thermoblation is the local delivery of heat energy to destroy cells Material removal Ablation Biopsy Controllable structures Microbot can be used as scaffold or provide building blocks (restructuring) Stent Occlusion Permanent or temporary implant Telemetry (transmitting information) Remote sensing transimit time history of for example oxygen concentration Marking and ransmitting position to outside world (to localize internal bleeding) Application areas for microbots

Circulatory system (heart and vessels) Central nervous system Urinary system and prostate The eye The ear The fetus Different kinds of movement

Helical propulsion Traveling- wave propulsion Pulling with magnetic field gradients Clinical magnetic resonance imaging system Conclusion

Minimally invasive techniques reduce postoperative pain, hospitalization duration, patient recovery time, infection risks, and overall cost, increasing the quality of care. Their design will be based on the task they need to accomplish and the type of environment in which they will operate. Developing this technology requires that we address issues such as localization and power, always keeping in mind that microrobots will be utilized in vivo.