Medical Robots

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Robotics Volume 2012, Article ID 401613, 14 pages doi:10.1155/2012/401613

Review Article Medical Robots: Current Systems and Research Directions

Ryan A. Beasley

Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution, Texas A&M University, 3367 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Ryan A. Beasley, beasley@entc.tamu.edu Received 10 March 2012; Revised 19 June 2012; Accepted 6 July 2012 Academic Editor: Farrokh Janabi-Sharifi Copyright © 2012 Ryan A. Beasley. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. First used medically in 1985, robots now make an impact in laparoscopy, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, emergency response, and various other medical disciplines. This paper provides a review of medical robot history and surveys the capabilities of current medical robot systems, primarily focusing on commercially available systems while covering a few prominent research projects. By examining robotic systems across time and disciplines, trends are discernible that imply future capabilities of medical robots, for example, increased usage of intraoperative images, improved robot arm design, and haptic feedback to guide the surgeon.

1. Introduction

Medical robotics is causing a paradigm shift in therapy. The most widespread surgical robot, Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci system, has been discussed in over 4,000 peer-reviewed publications, was cleared by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for multiple categories of operations, and was used in 80% of radical prostatectomies performed in the U.S. for 2008, just nine years after the system went on the market [1–3]. The rapid growth in medical robotics is driven by a combination of technological improvements (motors, materials, and control theory),...