Sang-Rok Oh

This article explores the advent of an innovative autonomous robot designed to enhance hospital disinfection through targeted wiping and ultraviolet-C (UV-C) irradiation methods. The urgency for such advancements has been underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed challenges, such as low compliance rates, physical fatigue, labor shortages, and heightened risk of pathogen exposure for disinfection workers. Traditional disinfection approaches, including UV-C irradiation mobile robots and hydrogen peroxide vapor methods, while effective, fall short in addressing obstacles like shaded areas and surface contaminants. To bridge this gap, we introduce a novel robot that combines physical wiping to remove contaminants with targeted UV-C irradiation for areas less amenable to wiping. Our development efforts have centered on optimizing disinfection efficacy and ensuring the robot’s reliability for practical applications in real-world hospitals. The performance and usability of this autonomous disinfection robot were thoroughly assessed at Pohang St. Mary’s Hospital, demonstrating its potential to transform hospital disinfection practices by complementing traditional disinfection tasks with advanced robotic assistance.

We design a central controller system (CCS) and a tele-controlled system (TCS) with an aim of developing the integrated tele-monitoring/operation system that can enable the medical staff to tele-monitor the state of therapeutic devices utilized in the isolation intensive care unit (ICU) and to tele-operate its user interfaces. To achieve this aim, we survey the medical staff for medical requirements first and define the design guideline for tele-monitoring/operation functionality and field applicability. In designing the CCS, we focus on realizing the device having intuitive and user-friendly interfaces so that the medical staff can use the device conveniently without pre-training. Further, we attempt to implement the TCS capable of manipulating various types of user interfaces of the therapeutic device (e.g., touch screen, buttons, and knobs) without failure. As two core components of the TCS, the precision XY-positioner having a maximum positioning error of about 0.695 mm and the end-effector having three-degrees-of-freedom motion (i.e., pressing, gripping, and rotating) are applied to the system. In the experiment conducted for assessing functionality, it is investigated that the time taken to complete the tele-operation after logging into the CCS is less than 1 minute. Furthermore, the result of field demonstration for focus group shows that the proposed system could be applied practically to the medical fields when the functional reliability is improved.

We develop two end-effectors for robot-assisted microsurgery with the aim of implementing compact and lightweight devices that can drive hand-operated commercial surgical instruments such as forceps and scissors. To achieve this objective, we mainly consider the type of actuator and the driving mechanism that influence not only the working performance but also the structural features of devices. As a suitable actuator, we employ shape memory alloy actuators because of their operational benefits such as high energy density and configurational simplicity. The two drivers are designed with the geometric models and then fabricated as functional prototypes for performance evaluation. Further, we investigate the practical applicability and usability of the devices based on the robot-assisted microsurgery on animal subjects. In the in-vivo experiment, we perform the epineurium windowing microsurgery. In this surgery, which is performed as a prerequisite of the process for conducting the visualization of peripheral nerve fibers with a confocal laser endo-microscope, we can precisely peel off the outer membrane of the peripheral nerve (approximately 1 mm in diameter) by using a tele-operated surgical robot equipped with the proposed end-effectors. The result of peripheral nerve fiber visualization demonstrates that the proposed devices can be suitably utilized for epineurium windowing microsurgery.

We develop a surgical forceps-driver and a haptic feedback master device that could be applied to a tele-operated microsurgical robotic system for peripheral nerve surgery. Considering that the neurological damage could occur to the peripheral nerve when an excessive force is applied to the nerve tissue, we aim to implement the forceps-driver with precision gripping-force control and the master device capable of providing haptic feedback. For this aim, a high-precision tiny force sensor is fabricated and embedded into the forceps-driver for gripping-force measurement. And, we develop a novel master device handled by surgeonapos;s thumb and forefinger. As a kind of a variable stiffness module, it functions to generate the forceps-drive operation command according to a surgeonapos;s pinching motion and to display haptic feedback by varying the stiffness based on the gripping-force measured from the slave device. Thus, the surgeon can tele-operate the forceps-driver intuitively as well as feel the gripped-object by proprioceptive haptic feedback. In the performance evaluation experiments for the master-slave system, the gripping-force measurement capacity of the forceps-driver and the stiffness variation range of the master device are investigated as about 4 N with a resolution of 0.03 N and about 3.6 N/mm with a resolution of 0.025 N/mm, respectively.

This paper introduces a new type of miniature device to insert an intrafascicular electrode into a peripheral nervous system that is covered with tough tissue membranes. The developed device is called nerve electrode insertion tool (NEIT) and consists of a nerve holder unit and an electrode insertion unit. Users can easily adjust the insertion position and direction of nerve electrodes while freely manipulating this compact handheld device. This paper introduces the form, configuration, and underlying mechanisms of the device and related surgical procedure. Utility tests using elastomer-made nerve models show that the electrode insertion time and position accuracy, respectively, improve from 72.1 to 4.17 s and 0.37 to 0.11 mm when employing the NEIT. Animal experiment results show that multishank planar electrodes (2 × 2 mm ² ) are successfully implanted into sciatic nerves of six rats. Treadmill tests and histological analysis present the neural functions of all the treated nerves are successfully recovered after three weeks. We expect the NEIT to be employed for other kinds of nerve electrodes and simplify the surgical process in neural engineering research.

This paper proposes a compact handheld device for magnetically inserting a neural interface into a peripheral nervous system (PNS). Users can pull and hold a flexible peripheral nerve (e.g., sciatic nerve) at the front of the device for the accurate and stable targeting process. The device automatically inserts a neural interface using magnetic impacts that are generated by a miniature motor and a pair of magnets. We investigate the characteristics of the employed mechanism, and present the preliminary experimental results.

Yongwon Hwang, Mun-Ho Jeong, Sang-Rok Oh, and Changyong Yoon. IJFIS 2017;17:114-20. https://doi.org/10.5391/IJFIS.2017.17.2.114