Posts
Reproduced courtesy of University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering
Cambridge researchers are helping to design healthcare robotics of the future by investigating a robot-assisted approach to training doctors in medical examinations.
Photo: Vertical and rotatory probing strategies are used to better align with
the skill of manual palpation. Here, the robotic arm probes a soft
phantom organ using a pressure sensor.
One of the aims of the collaborative project, known as ‘RoboPatient’, funded by the EPSRC, is to gain a deeper understanding of how recent advances in soft robotics and tactile sensing, for example, can be used to teach trainee doctors the often complex skill of palpation. Palpation is a method used by doctors during a physical examination, where they feel with their fingers or hands the size, texture, location and so on, of an organ or body part. It is a technique that is difficult to teach and one that requires a considerable amount of hands-on practice with real patients.
Post-Doctoral Research Associate Luca Scimeca, from the Department of Engineering’s Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab, is working alongside researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford. He is applying his background in artificial intelligence to robotic systems, by using machine learning to optimise the tactile sensing capabilities of a robot carrying out palpation. As it probes a soft phantom organ (made of silicone rubber) the robot detects and classifies hard inclusions within it. The results of the study are published in the journal Autonomous Robots...
The next steps of the RoboPatient project will focus on the patient side of the palpation process. In collaboration with Imperial College London, Luca and the research team will collect data on how palpation is felt/experienced by the patient in order to create a more realistic scenario, capturing reactions such as pain, facial expressions and even verbal cues. Imperial College London's latest soft phantom organ is integrated with an array of sensors that can measure, for example, the pressure that's being applied. This, together with a modular robotic face designed to present pain expressions, can help guide the palpation procedure and influence how the doctor performs the palpation.
Reference:
Scimeca, L; Maiolino, P; Bray, Ed; Iida, F. ‘Structuring of tactile sensory information for category formation in robotics palpation’. Autonomous Robots (2020). DOI: 10.1007/s10514-020-09931-y
Source: Cambridge Network
