Refinement and Prototyping of a Motor-Driven Dental Articulator

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Tactile Robotics is a Manitoba-based company that develops haptics, robotics and instrumentation technologies for medical, dentistry and rehabilitation therapy applications, and is an active member of Industry 4.0 visionary program in Canada. The company developed a motor-driven dental articulator for deployment in training dental practitioners as an improvement over the instrumentation used in the traditional novice-to-expert apprentice model. The motivation for this development includes the inability of the current pre-clinical dental curriculum to fully prepare students for providing complete treatment or transition to patient care clinics from the training programs. Students will typically require several years of pre-clinical hands-on training under very strict supervision in order to acquire the expertise for practice. While the need for a rigorous pre-clinical training will continue to be a requirement, the new dental articulator invented by Tactile Robotics will be useful for providing students with the classroom experience required for easy transitioning and integration with the actual patient care setting. The novelty of the dental articulator is in the opportunity for the students to learn the operation of dental tasks using a platform, simulating the human's oral cavity that directly mimics the posture and orientation of patients in real practice, compared to the currently used tabletop technique that does not provide the representative orientations. The motor-driven dental articulator is part of a vibrotactile dental platform (DenTeach TM) that is used for training dental and dental hygiene students. TACAM team will capitalize on the College's existing capabilities and expertise in design, electromechanical systems integration and fabrication processes to deliver this project. Tactile Robotics represents a progressive Small-Medium Enterprise (SME) in Manitoba with a high-priority commitment to research and development activities. The company has the capacity to implement and further advance the results of this project through commercialization. The College team is looking forward to expanding on existing knowledge in design and advanced manufacturing with opportunities for medical applications. The knowledge gained will benefit students/interns working on the project, research personnel and faculty and will be useful in future research engagements.