Robot

Animals are much better at running than robots. The difference in performance arises in the important dimensions of agility, range, and robustness. To understand the underlying causes for this performance gap, we compare natural and artificial technologies in the five subsystems critical for running: power, frame, actuation, sensing, and control. With few exceptions, engineering technologies meet or exceed the performance of their biological counterparts. We conclude that biology's advantage over engineering arises from better integration of subsystems, and we identify four fundamental obstacles that roboticists must overcome...

Legged robots take a leap forward.

A smart suction cup uses haptics to supplement vision for exploration of objects in a grasping task.

Advances in engineering enable wheeled-legged hybrid locomotion, an achievement not feasible in biological systems.

Autonomous wheeled-legged robots have the potential to transform logistics systems, improving operational efficiency and adaptability in urban environments. Navigating urban environments, however, poses unique challenges for robots, necessitating innovative solutions for locomotion and navigation. These challenges include the need for adaptive locomotion across varied terrains and the ability to navigate efficiently around complex dynamic obstacles. This work introduces a fully integrated system comprising adaptive locomotion control, mobility-aware local navigation planning, and large-scale path planning within the city...

The plot of the 2014 science-fiction movie Young Ones revolves around a robot pack mule based on the real-world BigDog.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: Robotic technology is increasingly utilized in perihilar cholangiocarcinoma treatments, requiring expertise in minimally invasive liver surgeries and biliary reconstructions. These resections often involve vascular and multiple sectoral bile duct reconstructions. Minimally invasive vascular repairs are now emerging with promising outcomes, potentially altering criteria for selecting minimally invasive hepatobiliary tumor resections. In this multimedia article, we describe our technique of robotic portal venous tangential primary reconstruction with right sectoral bile duct unification ductoplasty for the treatment of perihilar cholangiocarcinoma using the robotic approach...

The study of natural variations in photosynthesis in the Brassicaceae family offers the possibility of identifying mechanisms to enhance photosynthetic efficiency in crop plants. Indeed, this family, and particularly its tribe Brassiceae, has been shown to harbor species that have a higher-than-expected photosynthetic efficiency, possibly as a result of a complex evolutionary history. Over the past two decades, methods have been developed to measure photosynthetic efficiency based on chlorophyll fluorescence...

BACKGROUND: Limited data are available on return to sports and patient psychometric ratings of success after patellofemoral arthroplasty (PFA) in younger patients with high expectations to return to an active lifestyle. PURPOSE/HYPOTHESIS: The purpose of this article was to determine the role of PFA and its success in meeting patient expectations regarding the return to low-impact recreational sports and an active lifestyle in younger, active patients. It was hypothesized that PFA would allow younger patients to return to low-impact sports and an active lifestyle and achieve high patient psychometric ratings...

Background: Adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) for colorectal cancer (CRC) has led to substantial improvement in survival. Several clinical trials advocate the initiation of AC within 6-8 weeks of surgical resection based on evidence of improved survival with early initiation of AC. We aim to evaluate factors that predict initiation and completion of AC, subsequently improving survival. Methods: We identified 451 patients who underwent resection for CRC between 2014 and 2022. One hundred ten patients had stage II/III colorectal cancer who underwent resection followed by AC...

Robotic surgery was first introduced in the 1980s as a system to aid patients in the battlefield. Since then, robotic surgery has become an important minimally invasive tool and plays an important role in elective surgery among various surgical specialties. However, the role for robotic surgery in the emergent setting is not well established or studied. Robotic surgery has been shown to be advantageous to both patients and operating surgeons. Though limited, studies have found robotic surgery in the acute setting to be safe for patients...

BACKGROUND: This systematic review and meta-analysis will review randomized control trials for localized bladder cancer, evaluating surgical and pathologic outcomes of ORC versus RARC. METHODS: Randomized studies evaluating adults with non-metastatic bladder cancer who underwent a radical cystectomy. Randomized trials were selected for final review. Data was extracted and analyzed with Revman 5 software. The primary outcome was complication rates within 90 days...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Lower extremity fracture reduction surgery is a key step in the treatment of lower extremity fractures. How to ensure high precision of fracture reduction while reducing secondary trauma during reduction is a difficult problem in current surgery. METHODS: First, segmentation and three-dimensional reconstruction are performed based on fracture computed tomography images. A cross-sectional point cloud extraction algorithm based on the normal filtering of the long axis of the bone is designed to obtain the cross-sectional point clouds of the distal bone and the proximal bone, and the optimal reset target pose of the broken bone is obtained by using the iterative closest point algorithm...

We introduce MHVAE, a deep hierarchical variational autoencoder (VAE) that synthesizes missing images from various modalities. Extending multi-modal VAEs with a hierarchical latent structure, we introduce a probabilistic formulation for fusing multi-modal images in a common latent representation while having the flexibility to handle incomplete image sets as input. Moreover, adversarial learning is employed to generate sharper images. Extensive experiments are performed on the challenging problem of joint intra-operative ultrasound (iUS) and Magnetic Resonance (MR) synthesis...

OBJECTIVE: To compare the efficacy of robot-assisted single-port-plus-one pyeloplasty (RSPY) and laparoscopic single-port pyeloplasty (LSPY) in the treatment of children with ureteropelvic junction obstruction (UPJO). METHODS: The clinical data of 47 children who underwent surgery for UPJO at the Department of the Pediatric Surgery of the Fujian Provincial Hospital from October 2020 to September 2022 were analyzed retrospectively. Of these 47 children, 27 received RSPY while 20 underwent LSPY...

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have emerged as game-changing technologies with the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry. In the context of hospitals, their integration holds the promise of not only improving patient care but also driving competitive advantage and fostering sustainable development. This review paper aims to explore and evaluate the impact of AI and robotics applications on attaining competitive advantage and promoting sustainable development in hospitals, examines the current landscape of AI and robotics adoption in healthcare settings and delve into their specific applications within hospitals, including AI-assisted diagnosis, robotic surgery, patient monitoring, and data analytics...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Successful operation of a teleoperated robot depends on a well-designed control scheme to translate human motion into robot motion; however, a single control scheme may not be suitable for all users. On the other hand, individual personalization of control schemes may be infeasible for designers to produce. In this paper, we present a method by which users may be classified into groups with mutually compatible control scheme preferences. Users are asked to demonstrate freehand motions to control a simulated robot in a virtual reality environment...

Rail surface defects present a significant safety concern in railway operations. However, the scarcity of data poses challenges for employing deep learning in defect detection. This study proposes an enhanced ACGAN augmentation method to address these issues. Residual blocks mitigate vanishing gradient problems, while a spectral norm regularization-constrained discriminator improves stability and image quality. Substituting the generator's deconvolution layer with upsampling and convolution operations enhances computational efficiency...