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| Air Drone Robotics: VTOL UAV Delivery POD for Robotic Surgeon |
Air Drone has considered the development of a "trauma pod" surgical robot to operate on soldiers wounded away from home that would be configured for the VTOL UAV delivery systems.
Such systems can evacuate wounded soldiers under enemy fire and then operate on them, or if no threat is present to perform life and limb saving surgical procedures immediately upon remote controlled arrival.
The trauma victim would be placed in the pod where body scans, navigation of high intensity focused ultrasound applicator with an integrated three-dimensional ultrasound imaging system analysis, blood types, and medical conditions would be analyzed and surgical procedures performed. The pod would be an extension of the UAV VTOL vehicle and would also unfold as a complete medical supply and support clinic with bandages, medical instruments and plasma.
Air Drone is currently considering 2 Medical configurations. One for the delivery and evacuation of 2 trauma victims along with medical supplies, plasma, bandages to accompany 2 medics to a remote location under remote control from a control station via GPS and visual onboard cameras. The evacuation would be completed without the necessity of any onboard flight control input which would be optional and return with 4 patients under remote control.
The second Medical configuration Air Drone is considering adapting to the versatile UAV VTOL platform delivery system is a Robotic Flight Surgeon (RFS) employing the state of the art remote controlled robotic surgical systems and an array of cutting edge next generation medical advances. |
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| Benefits Robotic Surgery |
- Decreased blood loss and decreased likelihood of blood transfusion
- Improved visualization of the anatomy due to 3-D vision, increased magnification, and less blood loss
- Small incisions less than ½ an inch.
- Precise, fine surgical maneuvers guided by the surgeon
- Less pain after surgery, decreasing the need for pain medications
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| Faster recovery. Most patients are well enough to leave the hospital less than 24 hours after surgery and resume routine activities 1-2 weeks after surgery |
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| The Current State of The Art |
| Telepresence surgery and robotic telementoring are 2 revolutionary applications achieved by linking a robot to a telecommunication system, such as SOCRATES (Computer Motion). In telerobotic procedures, the surgeon operates from the surgeon's console, which is thousands of miles away from the slave robotic arm mounted on the patient; the surgeon's commands are relayed to the slave manipulator via fiber-optic cables. The first major transatlantic surgery was a telerobotic cholecystectomy performed by surgeons in New York, NY, on a patient in Strasbourg, France, in 2001. Since then, many telerobotic operations have been performed. Telepresence surgery allows surgeons to operate wherever their skills are needed without being in direct contact with the patient. |
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| Un Assisted Robotic Surgeon |
| In Rome, Italy it appears the first ever unmanned robot surgery has been successfully completed, long distance never the less. The surgery took 50 minutes in a Milanese hospital, on a 34-year-old patient suffering from atrial fibrillation. The operation was conducted in Boston, USA by a PC monitored by Carlo Pappone, head of Arrhythmia and Cardiac Electrophysiology at Milan's San Raffaele university. Also in attendance were a number of heart specialists, part of the international congress on arrhythmia. Pappone stated after the completion of the surgery "This operation has enabled us to cross a new frontier, that in the future people could have access to sophisticated surgery wherever they are." The Italian Doctor has conducted over 40 operations with the robot, some of which have gone onto being described in the Journals of the American College of Cardiology. Unlike any other previous surgery the robot was able to complete the surgery unaided, where in the past specific instructions had to be given by the operator. |
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| How it works |
The medical team is remotely located where the surgeon is seated comfortably on the robotic control console, an arrangement that reduces the surgeon's physical burden. The surgeon receives a 3-dimensional view that enhances depth perception; camera motion is steady and conveniently controlled by the operating surgeon via voice-activated or manual master controls. Also, manipulation of robotic arm instruments improves range of motion compared with traditional laparoscopic instruments, thus allowing the surgeon to perform more complex surgical movements and completion of complex and advanced surgical procedures with increased precision in a minimally invasive approach.
The surgeon's master console is a control panel to adjust functions such as focusing of the camera, motion scaling, and is the robot's user interface that provides the master surgeon with the following functions. |
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| A 3-dimensional view of the surgical field relayed from an endoscopic camera inside the patients body in control of the robot that creates a sense of being "immersed" into the surgical field. |
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| Master manipulators, which are handles or joysticks that the surgeon uses to make surgical movements that are then translated into real-time movements of the slave manipulators docked on the patient. Motion scaling (conversion of large natural movements to ultraprecise micromovements) and tremor filtering increase accuracy and precision of the surgeon's movements. |
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Patient-side slave robotic manipulators are robotic arms that manipulate the surgical instruments and the camera through laparoscopic ports connected to the patient's body. The da Vinci system handles surgical instruments with microarticulations near the tip (EndoWrist) that can duplicate motions of the human wrist, including rotation (7 degrees of freedom, ie, the greatest possible motion around a joint).
A surgical robot is a self-powered, computer-controlled device that can be programmed to aid in the positioning and manipulation of surgical instruments, enabling the surgeon to carry out more complex tasks. Systems currently in use are not intended to act independently from human surgeons or to replace them. Instead, these machines act as remote extensions completely governed by the surgeon and thus are best described as master-slave manipulators. Two master-slave systems have received approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are in use the da Vinci Surgical System (Intuitive Surgical, Mountain View, California) and the ZEUS system (Computer Motion, Goleta, California). Each system has 2 basic components linked together through data cables and a computer: |
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| Air Drone Inc, Air Intel Systems and Roadable Aircraft Inc are fully owned subsidiaries of the Mundus Group Inc. |
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