A perspective on medical robotics

This paper provides an overview of medical robotics, from the perspective of a researcher who has been actively involved in the field for 17 years. Like all robot systems, medical robots fundamentally couple information to physical action to significantly enhance humans' ability to perform important tasks-in this case surgical interventions, rehabilitation, or simply helping handicapped people in daily living tasks. Research areas include modeling and analysis of anatomy and task environments, interface technology between the "data world" and the physical world, and study of how complex systems are put together. This paper will discuss these research areas and illustrate their interrelationship with application examples. Although the main focus will be on robotic systems for surgery, it will also discuss the relationship of these research areas to rehabilitation and assistance robots. Finally, it will include some thoughts on the factors driving the acceptance of medical robotics and of how research can be most effectively organized.