A tribute to Raven

A nice article appeared yesterday in IEEE EMBS' Pulse magazine about the Raven robot.

"RAVEN is a third generation surgical robotics research platform, originally developed with DOD funding to demonstrate a lightweight field deployable surgical robot that could be teleoperated by surgeons remote from the battlefield. RAVEN’s genesis was in a decade of research at the University of Washington aimed at the application of mathematical modeling and technology to surgery. A series of experiments were designed to teach a computer model to recognize the motions of expert laparoscopic surgeons. Such a software system can be used in surgical training to recognize levels of surgical proficiency. Tools for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) were modified to incorporate a range of measurement instruments. Then these tools, along with systems including Blue and Red Dragon, were used to record a stream of dynamic and kinematic data from cadaver and animal surgeries. These data were then encapsulated in multi-state statistical model, using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) approach. HMMs are used frequently in speech recognition software. In this case the software was used to recognize the “language of surgery” with a vocabulary and grammar of its own."

Read more of the story here. Also, read our previous posts on the Raven: here, here, here and here.