Infi-Zeal's Blog

What was it that Ben Franklin said: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” A recent paper, Robotic Surgery & The Law in the USA—A Critique, indicates that manufacturers of robotic surgical tools, a sizeable swath of the U.S. medical establishment and government officials seem to prefer the pound of cure. RBR50 company Intuitive Surgical‘s new da Vinci Xi just won the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), paving the way for the company to start selling it.  More than a decade previous, 2000, the FDA similarly approved Intuitive’s very first da Vinci; the company has since racked up some 1.5M robotic surgeries with its robots. However, as Sulbha Sankhla, author of Robotic Surgery & The Law in the USA—A Critique, points out: “Years after the FDA first approved the da Vinci, there is still no industry standard for training and credentialing of doctors to use the robot, beyond a basic course by the manufacturer.” It seems rath...

Calculating the forward kinematics is often a vital first step to using a new robot in research. While there are some good tutorials available online, up until now there hasn’t been a simple step-by-step guide for calculating forward kinematics. In this post, we provide a simple guide along with some tips on calculating the kinematics of any robotic manipulator. Calculating kinematics is a cornerstone skill for robotics engineers.  Kinematics can sometimes be a pain, however, being told to “go and calculate the Forward Kinematics” is almost robotics research shorthand for “go and get familiar with this robot”. It’s the vital first step when using any new robot in research, particularly for manipulators. Even though I had learned the theory of kinematics in university, it wasn’t until I had calculated various kinematic solutions for a few real research robots that the whole process started to feel intuitive. Even then, because I was not calculating kinematics e...

Mining for resources hidden under the surface of the earth has never been a job devoid of hazards. You can start with the fact the it’s under the earth, and there’s no natural light, and the spaces can get tiny so it’s clearly not a job even for the mildly claustrophobic. Then there’s the danger of cave-ins that do happen even with all the modern marvels that we have access to thanks to advances in structural engineering. When it comes to coal mining, however, the danger is several times greater due to added danger of highly flammable gases in certain parts. Other than the Japanese using them for what basically amounts to some amusing (robotic pets), and some disconcerting (robots that look like creepy versions of children or grown women, etc) toys, the use of robotic technology has almost overwhelmingly been either to go where man hasn’t or cannot go, or in some other cases to augment human ability to do what was hitherto very difficult. We have robotic rover vehicles landing on...

A new study in Nature  reports that two people with tetraplegia were able to reach for and grasp objects in three-dimensional space using robotic arms that they controlled directly with brain activity. They used the BrainGate neural interface system, an investigational device currently being studied under an Investigational Device Exemption. One participant used the system to serve herself coffee for the first time since becoming paralyzed nearly 15 years ago. On April 12, 2011, nearly 15 years after she became paralyzed and unable to speak, a woman controlled a robotic arm by thinking about moving her arm and hand to lift a bottle of coffee to her mouth and take a drink. That achievement is one of the advances in brain-computer interfaces, restorative neurotechnology, and assistive robot technology described in the May 17 edition of the journal  Nature  by the BrainGate2 collaboration of researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Brown University, Mas...