Sensors Technology for Medical Robotics

Abstract

There are many definitions for the concept of a robot, perhaps too many; it has even been said that we do not know how to define them, but when we see a robot, we identify it. In any case, Tomas Lozano Pérez stated, back in the 1980s, that robotics arose from the intelligent connection between perception and action. The increase in the performance of the intelligent sensing systems allows both movement control loops and human–machine interaction approaches to be much more sophisticated. Thus, the development of intelligent sensors became very important for robotics applications outside of classical industrial environments. Indeed, the use of robots in unstructured environments requires the design and development of sensory systems able to obtain as much information as possible from the environment. It is necessary to provide robotics systems with the required data so that they can carry out their decision-making processes. A paradigm of these unstructured scenarios, which also involves intense human–robot collaboration, is medical applications. Sensor technology can be applied to medicine in the steps of diagnosis and treatment. In this way, intelligent sensory systems are often used for assisting in diagnosis activities and, combined with robots, are usually used for surgery and rehabilitation treatments. Thus, this Special Issue begins with papers devoted exclusively to the use of sensors for diagnosis, and then moves on to papers on the use of robots in medical applications.Thus, with regard to the diagnosis, the work developed by Nagae et al. [1] presents a smart sensor, documented with trials, capable of detecting sadness, anger, surprise, and joy by using resistive changes in the skin. This system is useful for identifying the emotions of people with autistic syndrome disorder under treatment in order to design an accurate therapy. This smart sensor provides very useful information to the specialist for use in treatment. (...)