Robots in Medicine

Robots are wide across used in several industrial applications. Robot applications are more found in medical industry in recent days. In initial days, robots were mostly used for simple surgeries and medical applications such as laparoscopic surgery and minimally invasive surgery in 1980's. At that time robotic surgeries were performed with the presence of surgeons in operation theatre. The present day technology has been so much advanced with more enhanced capabilities to perform several complicated tasks such as remote surgery and micro robotic surgery. The current paper discuss about the history and evolution of robots in medical industry and their latest technological advances, applications in various fields in medicine and limitations of robots in medical industry along with its future scope.

Robotics in Surgical Techniques Robotics in Surgical Techniques

Healthcare robotic applications are a growing trend due to rapid demographic changes that affect healthcare systems, professionals and quality of life indicators, for the elderly, the injured and the disabled. Current technological advances in robotic systems offer an exciting field for medical research, as the interdisciplinary approach of robotics in healthcare and specifically in surgery is continuously gaining ground. This chapter features a review of current applications, from external large scale robotic devices to nanoscale swarm robots programmed to interact on a cellular level.

Direct Perception and Action Decision for Unknown Object Grasping

This paper discusses the direct perception of an unknown object and the action decision to grasp an unknown object using depth sensor for social robots. Conventional methods estimate the accurate physical parameters when a robot wants to grasp an unknown object. Therefore, we propose a perceptual system based on an invariant concept in ecological psychology, which perceives the information relevant to the action of the robot. Firstly, we proposed the plane detection based approach for perceiving an unknown object. In this paper, we propose the sensation of grasping which is expressed by using inertia tensor, and applied with fuzzy inference using the relation between principle moment of inertia. The sensation of grasping encourages the decision for the grasping action directly without inferring from physical value such as size, posture and shape. As experimental results, we show that the sensation of grasping expresses the relative position and posture between the robot and the object, and the embodiment of the robot arm by one parameter. And, we verify the validity of the action decision from the sensation of grasping.

Analyzing an Impact of Industry 4.0 on Logistics and Supply Chain

The chapter presents an impact of Industry 4.0 transformation on logistics and supply chain management. Logistics and later supply chain management discipline has gone through a number of changes in the last 50 years, namely transition among mass, lean, agile, resilient, and green. All of them are paradigm changes as each significantly reshapes the orientation of the discipline in the source of competitiveness, risk concern, customer services, productivity, process management, externalities, costs, and other aspects of the disciplines. The author presents findings gained in the exploration of these fundamental changes and provides a comparison with a previous change of paradigm. The chapter proposes a transformation that the company supply chain system has to go through to re-establish its competitive position at the time of Industry 4.0. The chapter provides a case study of 3PL perception of Industry 4.0 based on in-depth interviews conducted among the major global 3PLs operating in the Czech Republic.

Demystifying the Power of Digital to Become a Cleverer Enterprise

New challenge in all industries is to catch up with the digital revolution. There are some pioneers and some followers in all industries but it is inevitable that digits catch every company by its claws. Our research aims to put forward the dynamics of the digital era or in other words new economy. Companies with a good level of digital maturity and thus high digital quotient become the leaders of their industries. Of course it is in some sectors digitization has become more obvious compared to others, but it is a rising trend in every industry, one can appoint. Banking sector is casts a great example how digital quotient and its factors come into play. Our research tries to define the new concept of digital quotient and illustrate a good practice by evaluating the strategies of a leading bank in Turkey.

Effects of Multi-Robot Team Formations on Distributed Area Coverage

This paper examines the problem of distributed coverage of an initially unknown environment using a multi-robot system. Specifically, focus is on a coverage technique for coordinating teams of multiple mobile robots that are deployed and maintained in a certain formation while covering the environment. The technique is analyzed theoretically and experimentally to verify its operation and performance within the Webots robot simulator, as well as on physical robots. Experimental results show that the described coverage technique with robot teams moving in formation can perform comparably with a technique where the robots move individually while covering the environment. The authors also quantify the effect of various parameters of the system, such as the size of the robot teams, the presence of localization, and wheel slip noise, as well as environment related features like the size of the environment and the presence of obstacles and walls on the performance of the area coverage operation.

Behavioral Analysis of Human-Human Remote Social Interaction Mediated by an Interactive Robot in a Cooperative Game Scenario

This book chapter describes the implementation, testing, and evaluation of the first prototype of the “AIBOcom” system, which allows remote users to play an interactive game cooperatively each using a pet-like robot as a social mediator. An exploratory pilot study tested this remote communication system with 10 pairs of participants who were exposed to two experimental conditions characterised by two different modes of synchronisation between the two robots that each interacts locally with the participant. In one mode, the robots incrementally affected each other's behaviour, while in the other, the robots mirrored each other's behaviour. Instruments used in this study include questionnaires, video observations and log files for the game state. The authors used various techniques to measure engagement and synchronization such as quantitative (e.g. rate of occurrence and average values) as well as qualitative measurements. In an exploratory data analysis, these multiple sources of data reflecting participant performance and characteristics were analyzed. Significant correlations were found and presented between the participants as well as participants' preferences and overall acceptance of such communication media. Findings indicate that participants preferred the mirroring mode, and that in this pilot study, robot-assisted remote communication was considered desirable and acceptable to the participants. Furthermore, the existence of interaction variations among different demographic groups was found, while this chapter lists and interprets the most significant effects.

Intelligent Agents and Autonomous Robots

Over decades new technologies, algorithms and methods are evolved and proposed. We can witness a paradigm shift from typewriters to computers, mechanics to mechnotronics, physics to aerodynamics, chemistry to computational chemistry and so on. Such advancements are the result of continuing research; which is still a driving force of researchers. In the same way, the research in the field of artificial intelligence (Russell, Stuart & Norvig, 2003) is major thrust area of researchers. Research in AI have coined different concepts like natural language processing, expert systems, software agents, learning, knowledge management, robotics to name a few. The objective of this chapter is to highlight the research path from software agents to robotics. This chapter begins with the introduction of software agents. The chapter further progresses with the discussion on intelligent agent, autonomous agents, autonomous robots, intelligent robots in different sections. The chapter finally concluded with the fine line between intelligent agents and autonomous robots.

Formal Modeling and Analysis of Collaborative Humanoid Robotics

A humanoid robot is inherently complex due to the heterogeneity of accessory devices and to the interactions of various interfaces, which will be exponentially increased in multiple robotics collaboration. Therefore, the design and implementation of multiple humanoid robotics (MHRs) remains a very challenging issue. It is known that formal methods provide a rigorous analysis of the complexity in both design of control and implementation of systems. This article presents an agent-based framework of formal modeling on the design of communication and control strategies of a team of autonomous robotics, to attain the specified tasks in a coordinated manner. To ensure a successful collaboration of multiple robotics, this formal agent-based framework captures behaviors in Petri Net models and specifies collaboration operations in four defined operations. To validate the framework, a non-trivial soccer bot set was implemented and simulation results were discussed.

Run-Time Compositional Software Platform for Autonomous NXT Robots

Autonomous Robots normally perform tasks in unstructured environments, with little or no continuous human guidance. This calls for context-aware, self-adaptive software systems. This paper aims at providing a flexible adaptive middleware platform to seamlessly integrate multiple adaptation logics during the run-time. To support such an approach, a reconfigurable middleware system “ACCADA” was designed to provide compositional adaptation. During the run-time, context knowledge is used to select the most appropriate adaptation modules so as to compose an adaptive system best-matching the current exogenous and endogenous conditions. Together with a structure modeler, this allows robotic applications' structure to be autonomously (re)-constructed and (re)-configured. This paper applies this model on a Lego NXT robot system. A remote NXT model is designed to wrap and expose native NXT devices into service components that can be managed during the run-time. A dynamic UI is implemented which can be changed and customized according to system conditions. Results show that the framework changes robot adaptation behavior during the run-time.