Hannes Bleuler - Böcker

This book contains mainly the selected papers of the First International Workshop on Medical and Service Robots, held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2012. The high quality of the scientific contributions is the result of a rigorous selection and improvement based on the participants’ exchange of opinions and extensive peer-review. This process has led to the publishing of the present collection of 16 independent valuable contributions and points of view and not as standard symposium or conference proceedings.The addressed issues are: Computational Kinematics, Mechanism Design, Linkages and  Manipulators, Mechanisms for Biomechanics, Mechanics of Robots, Control Issues for Mechanical Systems, Novel Designs, Teaching Methods, all of these being concentrated around robotic systems for medical and service applications.The results are of interest to researchers and professional practitioners as well as to Ph.D. students in the field of mechanical and electrical engineering.This volume marks the start of a subseries entitled “New Trends in Medical and Service Robots” within the Machine and Mechanism Science Series, presenting recent trends, research results and new challenges in the field of medical and service robotics.

This volume describes new frontiers in medical and service robotics in the light of recent developments in technology to advance robot design and implementation. In particular, the work looks at advances in design, development and implementation of contemporary surgical, rehabilitation and biorobots. Surgical robots allow surgeons greater access to areas under operation using more precise and less invasive methods. Rehabilitation robots facilitate and support the lives of the infirm, elderly people, or those with dysfunction of body parts affecting movement. These robots are also used for rehabilitation and related procedures, such as training and therapy. Biorobots are designed to imitate the cognition of humans and animals. The need to substitute humans working on delicate, tiresome and monotonous tasks, or working with potentially health-damaging toxic materials, requires intelligent, high-performance service robots with the ability to cooperate, advanced communication and sophisticated perception and cognitive capabilities. Progress in this field is fast and results need to be disseminated to stimulate both practical applications and further research. Thus, these papers are a valuable addition to existing literature.

Medical and Service Robotics integrate the most recent achievements in mechanics, mechatronics, computer science, haptic and teleoperation devices together with adaptive control algorithms.The book  includes topics such as surgery robotics, assist devices, rehabilitation technology, surgical instrumentation and Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) as examples for medical robotics. Autonomous cleaning, tending, logistics, surveying and rescue robots, and elderly and healthcare robots are typical examples of topics from service robotics. This is the Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Medical and Service Robots, held in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2014. It presents an overview of current research directions and fields of interest. It is divided into three sections, namely 1) assistive and rehabilitation devices; 2) surgical robotics; and 3) educational and service robotics. Most contributions are strongly anchored on collaborations between technical and medical actors, engineers, surgeons and clinicians. Biomedical robotics and the rapidly growing service automation fields have clearly overtaken the “classical” industrial robotics and automatic control centered activity familiar to the older generation of roboticists.

Medical and service roboticsintegrates several disciplines and technologies such as mechanisms,mechatronics, biomechanics, humanoid robotics, exoskeletons, andanthropomorphic hands.This book presents the most recent advances in medical and servicerobotics, with a stress on human aspects. It collects the selectedpeer-reviewed papers of the Fourth International Workshop on Medical andService Robots, held in Nantes, France in 2015, covering topics on:exoskeletons, anthropomorphic hands, therapeutic robots and rehabilitation,cognitive robots, humanoid and service robots, assistive robots and elderlyassistance, surgical robots, human-robot interfaces, BMI and BCI, hapticdevices and design for medical and assistive robotics. This book offers avaluable addition to existing literature.

This book contains mainly the selected papers of the First International Workshop on Medical and Service Robots, held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2012. The high quality of the scientific contributions is the result of a rigorous selection and improvement based on the participants’ exchange of opinions and extensive peer-review. This process has led to the publishing of the present collection of 16 independent valuable contributions and points of view and not as standard symposium or conference proceedings.The addressed issues are: Computational Kinematics, Mechanism Design, Linkages and  Manipulators, Mechanisms for Biomechanics, Mechanics of Robots, Control Issues for Mechanical Systems, Novel Designs, Teaching Methods, all of these being concentrated around robotic systems for medical and service applications.The results are of interest to researchers and professional practitioners as well as to Ph.D. students in the field of mechanical and electrical engineering.This volume marks the start of a subseries entitled “New Trends in Medical and Service Robots” within the Machine and Mechanism Science Series, presenting recent trends, research results and new challenges in the field of medical and service robotics.

This volume describes new frontiers in medical and service robotics in the light of recent developments in technology to advance robot design and implementation. In particular, the work looks at advances in design, development and implementation of contemporary surgical, rehabilitation and biorobots. Surgical robots allow surgeons greater access to areas under operation using more precise and less invasive methods. Rehabilitation robots facilitate and support the lives of the infirm, elderly people, or those with dysfunction of body parts affecting movement. These robots are also used for rehabilitation and related procedures, such as training and therapy. Biorobots are designed to imitate the cognition of humans and animals. The need to substitute humans working on delicate, tiresome and monotonous tasks, or working with potentially health-damaging toxic materials, requires intelligent, high-performance service robots with the ability to cooperate, advanced communication and sophisticated perception and cognitive capabilities. Progress in this field is fast and results need to be disseminated to stimulate both practical applications and further research. Thus, these papers are a valuable addition to existing literature.