Collaborative Research: Manipulation Network for Surgical Robotics Research

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While areas of the US such as California and the East coast have majormedical centers near every population center, there are many areas,even in developed countries, with a widely dispersed patientpopulation with significant obstacles to advanced medical care.Victims of large scale natural disasters and battlefield casualtiesalso lack state of the art care. Telesurgery could potentially meetthese needs. There is a growing interest in computational research onintelligent telesurgery. Today's telesurgery systems do not integratewith medical imaging or have intelligent functions to assist thesurgeon. This project is building seven teleoperated surgical robotand surgeon-interface systems powerful and precise enough to supportresearch on advanced robotic surgery techniques at seven majorresearch universities. University of Washington and University ofCalifornia Santa Cruz are building the seven robots and willdistribute them to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, University of Nebraska,U.C. Berkeley, and UCLA. When completed, the seven research labrobots will be networked together for sharing of software,interoperability, and on-line telesurgery experiments.ImpactThe results of this project will enable a network of researchers toprototype advanced surgical robotics techniques, and evaluate them inrealistic contexts including appropriate animal procedures. Besidesnew and less invasive cures, such a technology can provide easieraccess to care in remote parts of the US, and the developing world. The seven cooperating labs, and external partners will be able tointerconnect their systems, share modules of software, and replicateeach others experiments.