Robotic Cane Controlled to Adapt Automatically to Its User Gait Characteristics.

Research on robotic assistance devices tries to minimize the risk of falls due to misuse of non-actuated canes. This paper contributes to this research effort by presenting a novel control strategy of a robotic cane that adapts automatically to its user gait characteristics. We verified the proposed control law on a robotic cane sharing the main shape features of a non-actuated cane.

Precisely positioning the tip of an instrument inserted through an orifice with a free wrist robot: application to prostate biopsies.

Purpose: Robots with a spherical unactuated wrist can be used for minimally invasive surgery. With such a robot, positioning the wrist center controls the instrument tip position when assuming that the insertion site behaves like a lever with a fixed and known fulcrum. In practice, this assumption is not always respected.

Prostate biopsies assisted by comanipulated probe-holder: first in man.

Purpose: A comanipulator for assisting endorectal prostate biopsies is evaluated through a first-in-man clinical trial. This lightweight system, based on conventional robotic components, possesses six degrees of freedom. It uses three electric motors and three brakes.

Evaluation of the effect of a laparoscopic robotized needle holder on ergonomics and skills.

Background: Laparoscopy generates technical and ergonomics difficulties due to limited degrees of freedom (DOF) of forceps. To reduce this limitation, a new 5-mm robotized needle holder with two intracorporeal DOF, Jaimy(®), has been developed. The aim of this study was to evaluate its effects on ergonomics and skills.

Manual segmentation of individual muscles of the quadriceps femoris using MRI: a reappraisal.

Purpose: To propose a manual segmentation method for individual quadriceps femoris (QF) muscles and to test its reliability for muscle volume estimation.

Materials And Methods: Images were acquired every 5 mm along the thigh using a 3T MRI scanner on 10 young (mean age: 25 years) and 10 older (mean age: 75 years) adults using a three-point 3D Dixon sequence. In each slice, anatomical cross-sectional areas of the individual quadriceps muscles of the dominant leg were outlined by two operators working independently.