No worries. Robotic in medical terms means, essentially, that the machine is a puppet. Every motion is carried out by a human on a panel working controls. Controls that are often directly attached to the fingers.
The control signals are transmitted to the slave unit, robotic unit, and translated into the motions you see. The distance between the units can be considerable. In theory unlimited. The main stumbling block being an increased delay.
The mechanisms in the slave unit often have more joints and range of motion than the human hand so there is some translation but the machine itself is entirely incapable of any action on its own. These units are not capable of any independent action. A human still has to manually control every motion.
I strongly suspect that the video shown was sped up. Which makes it look smoother and far more impressive. Playing with the controls slowing it down to one quarter speed looks to me to be about right. Perhaps still a little fast. Obviously the operator has a whole lot of skill developed through practice.
No worries. Robotic in medical terms means, essentially, that the machine is a puppet. Every motion is carried out by a human on a panel working controls. Controls that are often directly attached to the fingers.
ReplyDeleteThe control signals are transmitted to the slave unit, robotic unit, and translated into the motions you see. The distance between the units can be considerable. In theory unlimited. The main stumbling block being an increased delay.
The mechanisms in the slave unit often have more joints and range of motion than the human hand so there is some translation but the machine itself is entirely incapable of any action on its own. These units are not capable of any independent action. A human still has to manually control every motion.
I strongly suspect that the video shown was sped up. Which makes it look smoother and far more impressive. Playing with the controls slowing it down to one quarter speed looks to me to be about right. Perhaps still a little fast. Obviously the operator has a whole lot of skill developed through practice.
To an old guy like me, everything is "Holy crap - here comes SkyNet!"
DeleteThanks for coming by.