5 accepted papers
In this work, we develop an approach for guiding robots to automatically localize and find the shapes of tumors and other stiff inclusions present in the anatomy. Our approach uses Gaussian processes to model the stiffness distribution and active learning to direct the palpation path of the robot. T…
In search and surveillance applications in robotics, it is intuitive to spatially distribute robot trajectories with respect to the probability of locating targets in the domain. Ergodic coverage is one such approach to trajectory planning in which a robot is directed such that the percentage of tim…
Palpation is a key diagnostic aid for physicians when looking for tissue abnormalities. This letter focuses on autonomous robotic palpation for locating regions of interest representing possible tumor locations or underlying anatomy (e.g., a hidden artery). Many approaches direct the robot to exhaus
Registering a surgical tool to an a priori model of the environment is an important first step in computer-aided surgery. In this paper we present an approach for simultaneous registration and stiffness mapping using blind exploration of flexible environments. During contact-based exploration of fle
One of the goals of computer-aided surgery is to register intraoperative data to preoperative model of the anatomy, and hence add complementary information that can facilitate the task of surgical navigation. In this context, mechanical palpation can reveal critical anatomical features such as arter