this is objectively dope AF. I had no idea you could buy the pieces but it makes perfect sense. Can't wait to see this on a robotic arm, and maybe build my own one day
This is exactly what I'm after. It's weird because the davinci surgical assistant has been around for at least 20 years, and I'm really surprised that no one in the DIY community has come up with a variant for the component repair field. At least one for just the fun of it
My first thoughts exactly. Steady hands could help novices accel at learning and building on the skillsets needed to help prevent e-waste by repairing micro circuitry.
I'm a software engineer and actually developed software to control an autonomous surgical robot (which mostly did suturing, anastomoses, etc.). We had some preclinical success on pigs, but eventually the team went our separate ways. One person actually joined Intuitive. As part of my design process, I was actually able to sit in and watch a minimally invasive surgery which used the daVinci robot, and use the robot myself to suture up some silicone training pads. It's surprisingly 'intuitive'... even for non-trained surgeons like myself. However, our platform we developed used completely custom tooling, and a 6-DOF arm from KUKA, along with a bunch of expensive fancy cameras. Anyway, it's cool to see other people working on similar projects in a personal capacity. It's a neat field and challenging problem, especially when you throw in robotic autonomy.
when i hear software with cars, and medical tools... some how a shiver goes over my body... even more when i hear they use a custom implementation of c....
I used a daVinci S at a Science Fair with my nephew in San Diego, and it was so much fun. As I've always relatively unsteady hands, I was surprised that it completely smoothed out any tremors, and I was immediately doing fancy two-handed moves with it, stretching rubber bands over things. The surgeon working the stall noticed and mentioned I was surprisingly dextrous with it. Since then I've always wished systems like that were available for non-medical hobbyist uses, like precision electronics, model-making and so on; cut-down, non-safety-critical versions of course.
@@tomgiddenthat makes me think: imagine if you could train a child on one of these. I wonder with their nimble brains could they compete with an adult after a few years? Perhaps you could identify surgeon prodigys.
Certified Da Vinci robotic surgeon here. A few comments: - Yes, it is awesome to use one. Not only the range of motion and precision, but also the 3d high definition vision inside of a patient. - the instruments you were able to get are from the Da Vinci Si. This version is deprecated and if I am not mistaken, they are not being produced anymore. The new version (Xi) uses instruments that work similarly, but are not compatible (planned obsolescence for sure, the Xi offers very few benefits over the Si, which was already very good, they lost some of their patents). - you control the instruments with two joysticks. There are pedals that you use when you want to change to another arm and control another instrument, or when you want to control the camera. In your device you may be able to control rotation and opening and closing of the instrument. What is still missing in your device is advancing and retracting, and hovering your instrument. The Da Vinci relies on a "remote center" in the trocar. Therefore, it won't damage the patient's belly when moving. Overall, great work! Feel free to DM me if you need some help!
One more thing: there is little to none haptic feedback. If you pinch the joystick too hard, you will damage something as the robotic arms are very strong. Honestly, you get used to it and you rely on what your seeing only, which is of very high definition.
I feel like I stumbled into a viral channel and accidentally hit the reset button on subscribers and view counts. This is incredibly professionally edited, entertaining, and interesting, I can tell this channel is about to blow up. First success my algorithm has had in awhile! New sub :)
Believe it or not they had a demonstration set up in a hospital I was at once. They let regular people operate it and it was super intuitive. The input had a view finder that showed the two sets of claws you were manipulating. Each hand had two finger loops mounted on armatures that let you operate the grabbers. The coolest part is that everything had a slight force feedback system so you could feel how you were interacting with the objects they set up(coins, sponge, etc). something about the size of a penny felt like the size of a dinner plate through the system.
Penny-dinner plate--that is awesome. Like they're impedance matching the feedback to a scale our bodies are more adept at handling. I'm just in awe thinking about how much nuance you could pick up on like that. Super subtle differences in how various tissue might feel that might just barely be discernable to gloved fingertips. I'm wondering how immediate that feedback is, like could you sorta glide along a ridge/seam just by feel alone? I suppose that particular kind of motion doesn't make much sense in a laparoscopic setting where you have a pivot at the keyhole. Anyway, very cool.
The company I work for designed and built a robot cell that loaded baskets of medical tools/devices into a series of sterilization machines. Within several months, the baskets that the robot used to load the parts had become corroded/worn to the point of replacement. These aren't delicate mechanical devices mind you, these are heavy-duty stainless steel baskets that would knock you out if someone threw one at you. I can understand how these only have a few sterilization cycles before needing to be replaced.
I used to work with these every day, but it was 8-10 years ago so it was pre XI, I believe it was SI. The motorized discs would "home" themselves after an instrument was inserted, and a successful homing had to be performed before the instrument could be extended into the patient. It was a multi stage process that allowed the robot to ensure that all the cables within the instrument were intact before they came into direct contact with the patient, and to allow the robot to sync the cables between the two independent sets. There was some kind of force detection within the main unit that would detect irregularities, so if the instrument was misaligned and attempting to move in an unexpected way while restricted inside the cannula, it would report an error. A red light would show on the docking portion of the arm, the assistant would be unable to advance the instrument into the patient, and the surgeon would not be able to control it. Major pain in the ass to use but a lot of really cool technology packed in
Till the patent lawyers get involved and so the work he puts into this gets taken due to being based on patented hardware. Then his choices will be to pay hundreds of thousands to millions in legal fees to maybe keep the project alive or sign everything over and sign an NDA. If it could potentially hurt the bottom line on a large company's start product line, well, FY!
@@ITpanda I’ll need to do some digging, but as per a 2016 Article i found (I’ll post the link below in case TH-cam blanks out link comments lol) most of the main Patents should be expired. Granted they can do shenanigans like filing new patents that are only slightly different, or changing disposable’s shapes (like how Nespresso did if i remember correctly) etc Also it’s best to not use trademarked names and whatnot in the title/thumbnail or whatever. Granted them sending lawyers is still a possibility, and I’m not a lawyer, but i would think it’s decently unlikely and they would have to be feeling especially rude. Granted at the same time Stephen Hawes got a Cease and Desist for a *name* that was supposedly similar, so the PnP machine is now called “LumenPnP”. Granted that is more trademark than patent, but they can be bold and small creators can’t get piles of lawyers.
When I was a kid, the natural science museum in my town opened a large addition. They had a week-long special event to promote it. One of the things they arranged was for an entire da Vinci training set up to be temporarily on display for people to try. They had a computer-based simulator, but also a real robot too! They had a bunch of challenges for people to try like wrapping dental rubber bands around various small objects. It was super cool to learn about the technology, but then actually sitting at one for a few supervised minutes to see how much skill goes into making and using those units left a lasting impression. 11/10 day at the museum.
I have been working on this exact same project for a few years. Decided to swap to stepper motors due to the coupled motion compensation using up a large portion of the movement range on the servos. The actual robot is cable driven all the way to the mounting plate. So, all the motors are in the base of the arm, which helps with balancing the weight. Also, due to the arm being a remote center mechanism it only requires two motors for the bulk of the motion. Also for control I was thinking that a magicleap/ultraleap hand tracking unit would be the most cost effective way to get 6dof control for two arms thought it would not have force feedback which is somthing the real robot has. I was even looking into the idea of the robot being controlled over a network connection so the robot could be controlled remotely.
Yes I was thinking stepper motors as well, because the Servos typically only have 180 degrees of motion but most of the pucks can travel further. Also, probably easier to implement torque detection with stepper motors.
On the topic of instrument control, only two instruments are ever under direct control by the surgeon. There's a foot pedal that switches the active instrument with whatever instrument is located on the same side as the pedal, and it's placed in a locked position. This is usually used for retraction or switching between needle drivers and scissors when suturing. The camera is also controlled independently (I can't remember if this is foot pedal or hand switch controlled) but disables all other inputs while the camera is moving. Usually the camera is placed as optimally as possible and moved as little as possible, both to prevent disorientation and to keep instruments in view at all times.
Worked in the OR a bit as a rotating surgery medical student. They have the camera/endoscope attached to one of the arms and they toggle between different tool arms like the input on your TV. Once u set the camera arm’s position, you change inputs to a different tool arm, thereby locking it in place. If u could program an Xbox or PS4 controller to control the arms and use a button to switch inputs that would be able to mimic the da Vinci machine quite nicely!
Absolutely not a "rediculous endeavor". This is Absolutely brilliant and I hope more young people are inspired by your curiosity and determination. You are literally showing everyone how anything is possible.
I had the opportunity to use one when the local hospital, that my parents worked at, got one and had a demo in its loby. It was extremely intuitive and required no leaning curve. I was in highschool at the time and it was really fun.
I will say that the freedom of movement afforded by the complex system was limitless. I had full range of motion of my hand. And there was a foot pedal that allowed you to pause movement of the system and pan your hand away. Similar to picking up a computer mouse off its pad moving it over and bringing it back down. After a couple minutes I felt entirely one with the machine
I might suggest looking into how 3d mice establish their many degrees of freedom. I saw another youtuber make a DIY version using a hall effect sensor and a magnet mounted to floating platform held in the air by 3 springs. Using an microcontroller you can measure the changes to twist, pitch, and height.
Hey, like several other commenters, I am a software engineer and I had the opportunity to use the Intuitive Surgical daVinci during CVPR conference. I must admit that the most important element of this experience was the intuitive control of the robot using „pinching” and foot-controlled pedals. Equally important was the control stand itself, equipped with goggles and head and elbow supports. I am not sure if the goggles had stereovision. I had the opportunity to perform treatment on physical rubber rings as well as virtual training programs such as „moving a ring along a curved wire”.
Hey Bennett! I’m actually used to be a Manufacturing Engineer for the Core Instruments division of Intuitive! You’ve got the older Si instruments there. Very impressed with your work! There’s a lot that goes into making that “talking” between the robot and instrument happen but you covered the basics great! A little background on the “life count” they actually have to qualify every instrument for a specific number of lives by running new versions through simulated use and do some math to calculate what the max life count would be. All has to be submitted through the FDA and approved for every country we send instruments to! Great Video!!
I worked at Intuitive for 5 years as an engineer trying to figuring out how to manufacture these surgical tools. I assure you that limiting the number of uses is purely a safety factor. It is critical that they don't fail mechanically and some surgery really pushes them to their mechanical limits.
It wouldn't give the haptic feedback, but a Leap Motion / Ultraleap Hand Tracker may work to an extent. For hand tracking *and* haptic feedback, short of making a OS Version of the Proper Device (which would be cool af, but agreeably hard (although a robotic arm without motors, if that makes any sense, may work. James Bruton did an OS "puppeteering rig" for the terminator torso+head, so between that and the OS Robotic Arms out there it *may* be doable with existing work and some integration hell)), there is an Open Source "Haptic Glove" type thing. I am unsure on latency and all that, but it was basically gloves, cables, and a sensor and/or motor module. They also have a discord which would be great for troubleshooting / brainstorming.
So I've actually briefly used one in a hospital brought in by a vendor. The controls at the station are electronically counter balanced and have different selectable scaling options built into the software to scale down you hand motions within the work space. They're incredibly well balanced and smooth, but id imagine you could achieve similar results with a cable and pulley balance system. Could also install rotary encoders on the balance pulleys to translate the movements.
@@TexZeTech ah yes ofc, it should be accessible to anybody with an internet connection so everybody can fulfil their dream of becoming a surgeon someday
Hi Bennett. Excellent work. I started down this same path last summer, prototyping a possible exhibit for a California science museum. In the end the exhibit got dropped ... but I'm still very much interested. I've got 3 of the "blue" units here (pincer-type, can't recall exact one) and a similar box of iterative 3D printed mounts. I like your spring-loaded coupling mechanism. Mine simply rides down the grooves and snaps into place, depending on rotating the discs until they seat properly. I'll check out your git repo.
Assuming the mechanical system has a linear response, calculating the output to input relationship is a really neat application of linear algebra. I honestly never thought that all the stuff I learned in college would come in handy...
This is awesome. I got to play with a DaVinci robot in the Hartford mall that they had set up for the public to see back in 2014. It was the coolest machine I've ever seen.
that fact that you have made it this far is impressive as!! working out those 4 axis ones is going to absolutely suck also as far as input is concerned, even if you built a mechanical replica the interface between that and your instruments is going to be some crazy complicated maths if you get this working to even a basic working state i think it would be incredibly useful for things outside the medical field, especially since you have worked out there will be a steady supply of the instruments. things like small scale electronics come to mind. I also think if you find the right instrument, that modifying the end effectors to suit other purposes would be another avenue for investigation. instant new follower here, lets see how much patience/endurance you have for this task!
I mean I don't particularly like math but it shouldn't be terribly difficult to calculate the end effector position based on the input as long as he opens one to figure out the pulley ratios inside.
OMG waaaaaay too underrated.. The quality of your videos is insane. Keep it up! I am currently building a robotic arm and will definitely come back to this video if I need some high precision tool.
I can say, your video is phenomenal! I was intrigued that you were able to do this in your home. However, the robotic instruments that you are using are no longer supported. They are from the DaVinci SI model. We are currently using the Davinvi XI. A few weeks ago, the fda has approved the latest model which is the DaVinci DV5…. And a few hospitals in the US are using it. All in all, your video is spectacular. Ohhh it is not voice controlled, the patient cart is connected to the surgeon console which is connected to the vision tower via fiber optic cables . You probably should check out working for intuitive 😊
I just had a minor abdominal operation done robotically a few weeks ago. Super cool to see all the different tools they have, wanted to ask to see stuff before they put me under but everything happened so fast once they were ready for me and wheeled me into the OR. I did ask what kind of abdominal mesh they were going to use, and so I got a little card to look it up after. Also very high tech/ mechanically interesting stuff. It unrolls itself and completely self adheres to the abdominal tissue like velcro without the need for stitches, and then partially gets absorbed into the tissue.
I lost it at 2:27 with the "...to me" line took a peek at some other videos on the channel - this is some really high quality and thoughtful content, subscribed for more
Very cool! (Love your soldering iron "drill press". 😄) About a decade ago, Intuitive brought one of their machines to a computing show I was at (can't remember which), and and they let people try it out moving little dice around. It was really amazing how they made it all feel completely natural. I also worked at a company that shared space with a machine shop that made the scissor heads, so saw a ton of them coming off the CNC machines and on the assembly benches. The scissors use a tungsten cable for actuation. The owner of the shop told me that the tiny cable was strong enough to hold up a Volkswagen!
Managed to get to use one for like 15 minutes at a temporary exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center upwards of 20 years ago prototype/demo/sales exhibit before they were on the market, as a technology collab with CMU. I've been fascinated with them since. Excellent project, sorely tempted.
The circle-spring is the adapter-hole-filler (large hole to small hole) used to plug 45rpm vinyl records so the narrow metal stem of a 33rpm turntable would fit correctly. I like those robotic driver controls, shouldn't be all that difficult to implement. These are great investigatory tools to work with, capacities strips used for pitch/bend with a synthesizer might do.
maybe some of the most interesting parts of the devinci are the haptics that the surgeon interacts with on his end. The controls reportedly are incredibly intuitive.
You should talk to folks at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They have one of these and have been working on it for quite a while. specifically, they've been developing on it with an open-source project in robotics operating system (ROS)
Nice! I worked on development of a few of the end effectors for Intuitive Surgical Ion robot, primarily biopsy needles. It was always a lot of fun playing around with the different end effectors.
Dude, you are one of the coolest dudes on TH-cam. I love that you hacked an out of reach medical surgical product. I’ve seen a lot of TH-cam videos on diy, but this one actually has legs when it comes to making a massive difference in terms of helping people. I could imagine people in 3rd world countries benefitting massively for your research.
As a Intuitive Engineer this is incredible, you’re really nearby of da Vinci fundamentals! Take a look of remote center of motion, that’s the most important and hard part of robotic assisted surgery
Why do I go to college when there’s people like you out in the world who are capable of incorporating every field of science into a single project on their own terms?
For control interfaces. They look like those DJI osimo camera gambles… maybe you could use one of those as a test input? It almost looks like two of those together, might give you the 6 axis…
I actually work at intuitive. You can get a tour of the factory and get in a robot and actually drive it. The insertion of the instrument to the robot is genius and you may glean some information by going through the tour.
My dad worked on the user interface for intuitive surgical. I think the best thing is to have something that takes in hand movements ie the pinching rotating and back and forth motion of someone's hand.
I actually got a chance to play around with one of these when I was 8 or 9. I was really interested in the body and wanted to be a surgeon so my mom took me to a davinci surgical system information conference (geared more towards elderly people who needed surgery) and they had one on display that they would let people use. It was absolutely incredible, especially for the time.
I worked in surgical robotics for a few years, the way the tool attaches is via the sterile drape, you have it right that is it is spring loaded but each input axis typically has a disc that that can side before engaging and creates an oldham coupler to take up small misalignments. Typically you have to engage the drape side first onto the robot and then the drape to the tool. As someone else said the robot uses an RCM- remote center so the Dofs needed are smaller than you might believe- this reason the DaVinci has so many joints is to setup the RCM to the patient and then have redundant motion for clearance arm to arm. The Xi is far superior to the Si in this regard. As to the inputs, you really don’t need anything crazy. The reason the DaVinci inputs are crazy is that they need the user to match the location and orientation of the tool. You can get away with nearly any kind of 6Dof sensor and it will work fine, you just have to pay attention when you clutch in and out a lot more.
The tools are cool inside, there are many different mechanisms to drive the wrist depending on device. If you open one know that the cables are tungsten and will be near impossible to cut and once cut conventionally become unusable.
I was just looking for something like this last week after trying to solder TINY wires on equally tiny SMD LEDS. I just ordered one and will be following along!
About the controls: 1, a glove that controls the 2 metallic "fingers" precisely. 2, Either 2 cameras to detect your hand "gestures" (we do not care the fingers) or a leap motion to detect the gestures. 3, some kind of virtual UI to assign the robot arms to your arms so you can control them with 1, and 2, This is a good starting point. Later on you will need some kind of stand as your hands would be super tired and painful after keeping them in air for 30 minutes. If you like it and you need help, just let me know.
This is really neat. I build non invasive medical devices at work. I don't have a college degree but I am determined to improve one of our products before I die. Videos like this are very inspiring to me.
So I’m no doctor but I was able to play with one of these once. I’m a respiratory therapist and when I was in school and at a nearby hospital doing clinical practice there was one set up as a display/demo model in the lobby. It was there for doctors to come down and play with. I took a chance and told them I was only a student but asked if I could get on the controls for a few minutes. They were super cool and let me try it out. They had an orange and some suturing needles. I was able to run a few sutures into an orange. The system they use to actually control the various arms/instruments while complicated were pretty intuitive to use. It was a great experience. This all of course was like 15+ years ago but I don’t think much has changed since.
hey, i used to work with a company that made the instruments. i was in the repairs department and received incoming and just because the hospitals say its been sterilised doesnt mean its fully clean. I saw bits and residue still attached and inside the mechanisms near 100% of the time, they also lose sterility because of bacterial growth and biofilms on the instruments and in the instruments, it's a huge reason why the parts have a limited lifespan. just a gross fyi when dealing with used medical instruments. incase ur wondering the slide in fit is as simple as it gets, the plastic has enough elastic deformation to accommodate the pins sliding into the motors and its also part of the force limiting of the motors since the pins wont allow excessive force before just breaking, rather the pins break on the machine than an instrument breaks inside the patient.
cool! I used the controller of this in a conference, they had this hand controller but so small it would sit on a normal desk, and was connected to a PC running the simulated machine; the output was on screen BUT also on the 2 lenses microscope, so you would get full 3D. I saw many people struggle with it, but i aced their little "obstacle course", it felt very intuitive. I remeber I could move my hand whenever i wanted and never hit any physical limit, so there is some VERY smart mechanical design there
For input you could probably use a switch joycon lol, 3-axis gyro, a trigger and few buttons. You could also use both in conjunction for even more options.
Paused at 4:30. The irony of you having these in what looks like the sterilization case and your puppy walking around on them was hilarious. On with the video.
I bet that looking into puppeteering solutions could help a lot in developing controls for the system. They seem to find some amazing engineering solutions for precise movement on a shoe string budget.
You could use a "potentiometer glove" trick to control >12 motors. Each finger controls a servo via a string/pulley to a potentiometer attached near the knuckles; then using a gyroscope/accelerometer for bigger movements of the larger arms.
Until you run the numbers on what it takes for even a class 1 device to get to market. Say goodbye to millions before you even sell your first unit. Then there’s QMS, etc etc etc. etc etc etc. A pacemaker implant costs only a fraction of what a lot of folks happily pay for a new car
The disks from the instrument do not connect directly to motors. The attachment arm has disk that are controlled by steel wires that run inside the arm. So the motors are inside the larger elbows of the arm.
for the controlls: there are open source versions of the spacemouse (tho none are at the stage of completion yet I'd say), that could probably be a pretty intuitive solution if you add another force sensor that measures squeezing or something for closing the sissors
I have worked in surgical robotics research. For input we have used two Force Dimension Omega 7 haptic devices which is probably beyond hobby budget, but maybe you find used ones. I can also try to ask their co-founder if they maybe have some leftovers :P Your best option would probably be two space mice by 3Dconnexion, although that means differential input, but better than nothing. If your robotic arms have enough freedom that you can do 6d motion with those tools, you need another input per hand for open and close, but maybe you can use foot pedals for that. I also got to try the DaVinci on a conference in simulation, it's cool but it's not overwhelming ;)
It'll be interesting to see how you set up the controller using an input like this, I think impedance control would feel very differently from what exists today but it could be effective for your needs
This content is absolute gold. I am subbed and glued to my seat, both ironically and unironically. I have been waiting for someone to tackle controlling these, as the used tooling looks very capable for other uses outside a surgeon's use.
For input, consider a VR controller. Within VR you can scale your inputs relative to the amount of motion you want to produce, and tracking is already 6dof
My recommendation for making that setup to control it is simple, but also complex. Make 3D printed analog sticks that you can hook your fingers in, then set the analog sticks on a surface that makes them easy to use. You can then put the finished device on something like a space mouse in order to move it forward, backward, or rotate the arms. Pushing down can lower, and pulling up can raise it. Or you can just use a scroll wheel which would be a lot more precise. Now that I think about it, scroll wheels would be the best choice in a lot of cases considering how hard it is to overshoot with them.
The possibilities for these things are huge. With the right AI, these machines could do surgeries much faster and far more accurately than human hands could ever do them.
I can see your focusing and studying other TH-camrs to make these videos as good as they can be, as soon as possible. Paying off really well, good camera presence, editing etc :)
Needs force feedback. Probably with torque control. With two identical robot arms that have force feedback you can control one with the other and vice versa. If you want a small one for detailed surgery you can scale the forces and motions from the small one to the large one.
Similar to shocks on motorcycle forks, many of those monitor arms have a "preload" screw which adjusts tension on the return spring. Often tiny, if you can find/reach it, backing off that screw will reduce the need for ballast weight. There may be one per segment. Expect a grub screw with a tiny hex head nestled in the joint that is colinear with the long axis of the arm segment. I bought cheap amazon arms and I needed a magnifier to see them. You are probably mechanically skilled enough to swap out the spring but I am probably not: I expect it to sort of explode during disassembly, distributing key mechanisms around the room.
I know other people have made this point already, but I think it still bears repeating. I’m directly involved in a company which works with medical devices like this one, and the primary reason that medical devices have such limited lifespans is the testing requirements and the brutality of the sterilization process. Each device that we make goes through literal months of tests (the project I’m on right now has about 6 months of just testing planned, and it’s nowhere near as complex as a surgical robot,) and the end goal of all of these is to ensure that your device will not fail under normal use conditions or have any side-effects that would harm the patient. Parts that are being tested need to be equivalent to production parts, so for this machine in specific they likely needed to spin up an entire production line to produce the parts required for the testing. (For the project I’m working on right now, we’re making over 500 complete devices, just to test.) On top of that, the devices will need to go through sterilization cycles in-between each use, and no matter what method is used they take a massive hit on the integrity of parts that are cleaned. All in all it just makes more sense to test the minimum numbers of parts possible, to a level that doctors and insurance companies indicated would be acceptable. Aside from that, I’m incredibly excited that you get to show off the inner workings of some of these devices to a larger audience. The technology is fascinating and your videos on the topic have been awesome!
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Bennett you’re starting to scare us
Don’t ever stop
Not scaring me. I'm down to be scarred by a diy robot
Again
He is, spooky.
Scaroused
Michael Reeve's completely sane counterpart.
Michael's was better tho
Michael Reeve wannabe
this is but another form of insanity
Was looking for this comment🤣
@@Steve98345 you ok bud? you're comparing people who could care less about you.
this is objectively dope AF. I had no idea you could buy the pieces but it makes perfect sense. Can't wait to see this on a robotic arm, and maybe build my own one day
The legend in the comments
put it on your bio bot and hook up a microscope
When is the next doom video coming out?
Dios hermano eres lo maximo yo tambien voy a hacer uno saludos desde peru
When it comes to doing the lab work and preparing the specimens, how many actions can't be completed by some sort of guided automation?
Imagine using this as a soldering bot, it would make microwiring and board repair so much easier
My thoughts exactly!
This is exactly what I'm after. It's weird because the davinci surgical assistant has been around for at least 20 years, and I'm really surprised that no one in the DIY community has come up with a variant for the component repair field. At least one for just the fun of it
My first thoughts exactly. Steady hands could help novices accel at learning and building on the skillsets needed to help prevent e-waste by repairing micro circuitry.
That is a great idea, even just to have it as a dynamic 3rd pair of hands would be helpful.
I'm a software engineer and actually developed software to control an autonomous surgical robot (which mostly did suturing, anastomoses, etc.). We had some preclinical success on pigs, but eventually the team went our separate ways. One person actually joined Intuitive. As part of my design process, I was actually able to sit in and watch a minimally invasive surgery which used the daVinci robot, and use the robot myself to suture up some silicone training pads. It's surprisingly 'intuitive'... even for non-trained surgeons like myself. However, our platform we developed used completely custom tooling, and a 6-DOF arm from KUKA, along with a bunch of expensive fancy cameras.
Anyway, it's cool to see other people working on similar projects in a personal capacity. It's a neat field and challenging problem, especially when you throw in robotic autonomy.
when i hear software with cars, and medical tools... some how a shiver goes over my body...
even more when i hear they use a custom implementation of c....
I used a daVinci S at a Science Fair with my nephew in San Diego, and it was so much fun. As I've always relatively unsteady hands, I was surprised that it completely smoothed out any tremors, and I was immediately doing fancy two-handed moves with it, stretching rubber bands over things. The surgeon working the stall noticed and mentioned I was surprisingly dextrous with it. Since then I've always wished systems like that were available for non-medical hobbyist uses, like precision electronics, model-making and so on; cut-down, non-safety-critical versions of course.
That sounds incredible, is there anywhere I can read further about it?
@@tomgiddenAhhh I never thought about it, but one of these would be amazing for model making!! 🤯
@@tomgiddenthat makes me think: imagine if you could train a child on one of these. I wonder with their nimble brains could they compete with an adult after a few years? Perhaps you could identify surgeon prodigys.
Certified Da Vinci robotic surgeon here. A few comments:
- Yes, it is awesome to use one. Not only the range of motion and precision, but also the 3d high definition vision inside of a patient.
- the instruments you were able to get are from the Da Vinci Si. This version is deprecated and if I am not mistaken, they are not being produced anymore. The new version (Xi) uses instruments that work similarly, but are not compatible (planned obsolescence for sure, the Xi offers very few benefits over the Si, which was already very good, they lost some of their patents).
- you control the instruments with two joysticks. There are pedals that you use when you want to change to another arm and control another instrument, or when you want to control the camera. In your device you may be able to control rotation and opening and closing of the instrument. What is still missing in your device is advancing and retracting, and hovering your instrument. The Da Vinci relies on a "remote center" in the trocar. Therefore, it won't damage the patient's belly when moving.
Overall, great work! Feel free to DM me if you need some help!
One more thing: there is little to none haptic feedback. If you pinch the joystick too hard, you will damage something as the robotic arms are very strong. Honestly, you get used to it and you rely on what your seeing only, which is of very high definition.
hey, I am working on a similar project I don't want to be rude but I have some questions and would appreciate ur help !
I feel like I stumbled into a viral channel and accidentally hit the reset button on subscribers and view counts. This is incredibly professionally edited, entertaining, and interesting, I can tell this channel is about to blow up. First success my algorithm has had in awhile! New sub :)
SAme! this is great waouuu
exactly!
We are here on the ground floor fellas! Get ready......
exactly my thoughts seconds in.. this will be the next.... stuff made here, or Michael Reeves
Yep!
Believe it or not they had a demonstration set up in a hospital I was at once. They let regular people operate it and it was super intuitive. The input had a view finder that showed the two sets of claws you were manipulating. Each hand had two finger loops mounted on armatures that let you operate the grabbers. The coolest part is that everything had a slight force feedback system so you could feel how you were interacting with the objects they set up(coins, sponge, etc). something about the size of a penny felt like the size of a dinner plate through the system.
Penny-dinner plate--that is awesome. Like they're impedance matching the feedback to a scale our bodies are more adept at handling. I'm just in awe thinking about how much nuance you could pick up on like that. Super subtle differences in how various tissue might feel that might just barely be discernable to gloved fingertips.
I'm wondering how immediate that feedback is, like could you sorta glide along a ridge/seam just by feel alone? I suppose that particular kind of motion doesn't make much sense in a laparoscopic setting where you have a pivot at the keyhole.
Anyway, very cool.
My hospital had the same demo and I loved using it
@@barcodenosebleed5485they said there was movement scaling options. And there was definitely haptic feedback
The company I work for designed and built a robot cell that loaded baskets of medical tools/devices into a series of sterilization machines. Within several months, the baskets that the robot used to load the parts had become corroded/worn to the point of replacement. These aren't delicate mechanical devices mind you, these are heavy-duty stainless steel baskets that would knock you out if someone threw one at you. I can understand how these only have a few sterilization cycles before needing to be replaced.
I used to work with these every day, but it was 8-10 years ago so it was pre XI, I believe it was SI. The motorized discs would "home" themselves after an instrument was inserted, and a successful homing had to be performed before the instrument could be extended into the patient. It was a multi stage process that allowed the robot to ensure that all the cables within the instrument were intact before they came into direct contact with the patient, and to allow the robot to sync the cables between the two independent sets. There was some kind of force detection within the main unit that would detect irregularities, so if the instrument was misaligned and attempting to move in an unexpected way while restricted inside the cannula, it would report an error. A red light would show on the docking portion of the arm, the assistant would be unable to advance the instrument into the patient, and the surgeon would not be able to control it. Major pain in the ass to use but a lot of really cool technology packed in
*Open Source Medical Robot?!?* I A M S O H Y P E D
OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING!!!
open source the sauce...
Edit: obligatory ho hail Richard Stallman
nurse: so i know how you like open things but maybe you should close that artery back up.... the patient already lost 2 liters of blood
Till the patent lawyers get involved and so the work he puts into this gets taken due to being based on patented hardware. Then his choices will be to pay hundreds of thousands to millions in legal fees to maybe keep the project alive or sign everything over and sign an NDA.
If it could potentially hurt the bottom line on a large company's start product line, well, FY!
@@ITpanda I’ll need to do some digging, but as per a 2016 Article i found (I’ll post the link below in case TH-cam blanks out link comments lol) most of the main Patents should be expired.
Granted they can do shenanigans like filing new patents that are only slightly different, or changing disposable’s shapes (like how Nespresso did if i remember correctly) etc
Also it’s best to not use trademarked names and whatnot in the title/thumbnail or whatever.
Granted them sending lawyers is still a possibility, and I’m not a lawyer, but i would think it’s decently unlikely and they would have to be feeling especially rude.
Granted at the same time Stephen Hawes got a Cease and Desist for a *name* that was supposedly similar, so the PnP machine is now called “LumenPnP”. Granted that is more trademark than patent, but they can be bold and small creators can’t get piles of lawyers.
Your channel is about to explode
When I was a kid, the natural science museum in my town opened a large addition. They had a week-long special event to promote it. One of the things they arranged was for an entire da Vinci training set up to be temporarily on display for people to try. They had a computer-based simulator, but also a real robot too! They had a bunch of challenges for people to try like wrapping dental rubber bands around various small objects. It was super cool to learn about the technology, but then actually sitting at one for a few supervised minutes to see how much skill goes into making and using those units left a lasting impression. 11/10 day at the museum.
I have been working on this exact same project for a few years. Decided to swap to stepper motors due to the coupled motion compensation using up a large portion of the movement range on the servos. The actual robot is cable driven all the way to the mounting plate. So, all the motors are in the base of the arm, which helps with balancing the weight. Also, due to the arm being a remote center mechanism it only requires two motors for the bulk of the motion.
Also for control I was thinking that a magicleap/ultraleap hand tracking unit would be the most cost effective way to get 6dof control for two arms thought it would not have force feedback which is somthing the real robot has. I was even looking into the idea of the robot being controlled over a network connection so the robot could be controlled remotely.
Yes I was thinking stepper motors as well, because the Servos typically only have 180 degrees of motion but most of the pucks can travel further. Also, probably easier to implement torque detection with stepper motors.
On the topic of instrument control, only two instruments are ever under direct control by the surgeon. There's a foot pedal that switches the active instrument with whatever instrument is located on the same side as the pedal, and it's placed in a locked position. This is usually used for retraction or switching between needle drivers and scissors when suturing. The camera is also controlled independently (I can't remember if this is foot pedal or hand switch controlled) but disables all other inputs while the camera is moving. Usually the camera is placed as optimally as possible and moved as little as possible, both to prevent disorientation and to keep instruments in view at all times.
Worked in the OR a bit as a rotating surgery medical student. They have the camera/endoscope attached to one of the arms and they toggle between different tool arms like the input on your TV. Once u set the camera arm’s position, you change inputs to a different tool arm, thereby locking it in place. If u could program an Xbox or PS4 controller to control the arms and use a button to switch inputs that would be able to mimic the da Vinci machine quite nicely!
Absolutely not a "rediculous endeavor". This is Absolutely brilliant and I hope more young people are inspired by your curiosity and determination. You are literally showing everyone how anything is possible.
I had the opportunity to use one when the local hospital, that my parents worked at, got one and had a demo in its loby. It was extremely intuitive and required no leaning curve. I was in highschool at the time and it was really fun.
I will say that the freedom of movement afforded by the complex system was limitless. I had full range of motion of my hand. And there was a foot pedal that allowed you to pause movement of the system and pan your hand away. Similar to picking up a computer mouse off its pad moving it over and bringing it back down. After a couple minutes I felt entirely one with the machine
This is a great analogy- I read in a manual about this virtual “clutch” system, but this makes more sense now! Thanks!
I might suggest looking into how 3d mice establish their many degrees of freedom. I saw another youtuber make a DIY version using a hall effect sensor and a magnet mounted to floating platform held in the air by 3 springs. Using an microcontroller you can measure the changes to twist, pitch, and height.
Hey, like several other commenters, I am a software engineer and I had the opportunity to use the Intuitive Surgical daVinci during CVPR conference. I must admit that the most important element of this experience was the intuitive control of the robot using „pinching” and foot-controlled pedals. Equally important was the control stand itself, equipped with goggles and head and elbow supports. I am not sure if the goggles had stereovision. I had the opportunity to perform treatment on physical rubber rings as well as virtual training programs such as „moving a ring along a curved wire”.
There is stereovision for the operator but not the assistants.
Hey Bennett! I’m actually used to be a Manufacturing Engineer for the Core Instruments division of Intuitive! You’ve got the older Si instruments there. Very impressed with your work! There’s a lot that goes into making that “talking” between the robot and instrument happen but you covered the basics great! A little background on the “life count” they actually have to qualify every instrument for a specific number of lives by running new versions through simulated use and do some math to calculate what the max life count would be. All has to be submitted through the FDA and approved for every country we send instruments to! Great Video!!
A "Space Mouse" might be a good option for a control scheme. They're commonly used for 3d modeling so it seems like it would translate well.
I worked at Intuitive for 5 years as an engineer trying to figuring out how to manufacture these surgical tools. I assure you that limiting the number of uses is purely a safety factor. It is critical that they don't fail mechanically and some surgery really pushes them to their mechanical limits.
It wouldn't give the haptic feedback, but a Leap Motion / Ultraleap Hand Tracker may work to an extent.
For hand tracking *and* haptic feedback, short of making a OS Version of the Proper Device (which would be cool af, but agreeably hard (although a robotic arm without motors, if that makes any sense, may work. James Bruton did an OS "puppeteering rig" for the terminator torso+head, so between that and the OS Robotic Arms out there it *may* be doable with existing work and some integration hell)), there is an Open Source "Haptic Glove" type thing. I am unsure on latency and all that, but it was basically gloves, cables, and a sensor and/or motor module. They also have a discord which would be great for troubleshooting / brainstorming.
This man is just casually rebuilding one of the most infamous pieces of medical technology in the modern age. Instant sub, need to see more
Loved the whiteboard gag, excited to see where this project goes!
So I've actually briefly used one in a hospital brought in by a vendor. The controls at the station are electronically counter balanced and have different selectable scaling options built into the software to scale down you hand motions within the work space. They're incredibly well balanced and smooth, but id imagine you could achieve similar results with a cable and pulley balance system. Could also install rotary encoders on the balance pulleys to translate the movements.
voice control surgical robot sounds like a good idea for sure
Don't forget to add IOT tech.
@@TexZeTech ah yes ofc, it should be accessible to anybody with an internet connection so everybody can fulfil their dream of becoming a surgeon someday
Hi Bennett. Excellent work. I started down this same path last summer, prototyping a possible exhibit for a California science museum. In the end the exhibit got dropped ... but I'm still very much interested. I've got 3 of the "blue" units here (pincer-type, can't recall exact one) and a similar box of iterative 3D printed mounts. I like your spring-loaded coupling mechanism. Mine simply rides down the grooves and snaps into place, depending on rotating the discs until they seat properly. I'll check out your git repo.
This channel is criminally underrated!
Don't you mean "clinically" underrated? *smug emoji*
r/angryupvote @@FoxRayne
Assuming the mechanical system has a linear response, calculating the output to input relationship is a really neat application of linear algebra. I honestly never thought that all the stuff I learned in college would come in handy...
I KNEW SALA WAS RELEVANT!
love the amazing 'just because' video. and the engineering involved. great stuff!
This is awesome. I got to play with a DaVinci robot in the Hartford mall that they had set up for the public to see back in 2014. It was the coolest machine I've ever seen.
that fact that you have made it this far is impressive as!!
working out those 4 axis ones is going to absolutely suck
also as far as input is concerned, even if you built a mechanical replica the interface between that and your instruments is going to be some crazy complicated maths
if you get this working to even a basic working state i think it would be incredibly useful for things outside the medical field, especially since you have worked out there will be a steady supply of the instruments.
things like small scale electronics come to mind.
I also think if you find the right instrument, that modifying the end effectors to suit other purposes would be another avenue for investigation.
instant new follower here, lets see how much patience/endurance you have for this task!
I mean I don't particularly like math but it shouldn't be terribly difficult to calculate the end effector position based on the input as long as he opens one to figure out the pulley ratios inside.
So sick, amazing work!
OMG waaaaaay too underrated.. The quality of your videos is insane. Keep it up! I am currently building a robotic arm and will definitely come back to this video if I need some high precision tool.
I can say, your video is phenomenal! I was intrigued that you were able to do this in your home. However, the robotic instruments that you are using are no longer supported. They are from the DaVinci SI model. We are currently using the Davinvi XI. A few weeks ago, the fda has approved the latest model which is the DaVinci DV5…. And a few hospitals in the US are using it. All in all, your video is spectacular. Ohhh it is not voice controlled, the patient cart is connected to the surgeon console which is connected to the vision tower via fiber optic cables . You probably should check out working for intuitive 😊
This man is an expert content creator, how does he not have more subscribers?
Because his first video was only 3 months ago.
new subscribers here
He will hit a million subs in like 1 year if all of his content is this good. This is the first video ive seen from him and I Alr subbed
Literally!!!!
Great Video love the design of the linking mechanism with the servos. Got a good chuckle out of the failed parts bucket as well.
"Im sorry Bennett, I can't allow you to do that."
I just had a minor abdominal operation done robotically a few weeks ago. Super cool to see all the different tools they have, wanted to ask to see stuff before they put me under but everything happened so fast once they were ready for me and wheeled me into the OR. I did ask what kind of abdominal mesh they were going to use, and so I got a little card to look it up after. Also very high tech/ mechanically interesting stuff. It unrolls itself and completely self adheres to the abdominal tissue like velcro without the need for stitches, and then partially gets absorbed into the tissue.
I lost it at 2:27 with the "...to me" line
took a peek at some other videos on the channel -
this is some really high quality and thoughtful content, subscribed for more
One of my fav parts for sure😂😂
Our civilisation needs more people like you. And our governments need to spade money for science, not for wars.
Oh boy I sure hope davinci doesnt greet you with cease and desist
Very cool! (Love your soldering iron "drill press". 😄) About a decade ago, Intuitive brought one of their machines to a computing show I was at (can't remember which), and and they let people try it out moving little dice around. It was really amazing how they made it all feel completely natural. I also worked at a company that shared space with a machine shop that made the scissor heads, so saw a ton of them coming off the CNC machines and on the assembly benches. The scissors use a tungsten cable for actuation. The owner of the shop told me that the tiny cable was strong enough to hold up a Volkswagen!
Michelle Reeves without drugs
🗿
michelle reeves does drug??
Who's counting?
Alcohol, caffeine. But people are easily like that without drugs.
Managed to get to use one for like 15 minutes at a temporary exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center upwards of 20 years ago prototype/demo/sales exhibit before they were on the market, as a technology collab with CMU. I've been fascinated with them since. Excellent project, sorely tempted.
The freelance online science community is literally changing the world. This is absolutely amazing in the most Absurd way possible 👍🏻
I would love to see the mechanical components taken apart! It would be cool to see how the cable mechanism works.
Channel: Kyle Bartholomew has a video called Teardown of a Surgical Robot Instrument that opens one up.
Seeing not only hard working but smart colleagues is always a joy. You have a sub!
I like how you put a video with bunch of jump cuts in mids of your technical explanation to keep our short attention brains engaged
The circle-spring is the adapter-hole-filler (large hole to small hole) used to plug 45rpm vinyl records so the narrow metal stem of a 33rpm turntable would fit correctly. I like those robotic driver controls, shouldn't be all that difficult to implement. These are great investigatory tools to work with, capacities strips used for pitch/bend with a synthesizer might do.
maybe some of the most interesting parts of the devinci are the haptics that the surgeon interacts with on his end. The controls reportedly are incredibly intuitive.
Thought the da vinci lacked haptic feedback? as that is its biggest con
You should talk to folks at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They have one of these and have been working on it for quite a while. specifically, they've been developing on it with an open-source project in robotics operating system (ROS)
Nice! I worked on development of a few of the end effectors for Intuitive Surgical Ion robot, primarily biopsy needles. It was always a lot of fun playing around with the different end effectors.
Dude, you are one of the coolest dudes on TH-cam. I love that you hacked an out of reach medical surgical product. I’ve seen a lot of TH-cam videos on diy, but this one actually has legs when it comes to making a massive difference in terms of helping people. I could imagine people in 3rd world countries benefitting massively for your research.
As a Intuitive Engineer this is incredible, you’re really nearby of da Vinci fundamentals! Take a look of remote center of motion, that’s the most important and hard part of robotic assisted surgery
Dude, this is sick! Figuring out how to control the arm looked like a nightmare because of how convolved the inputs are.
Thank you! I’ve certainly got my work cut out for me but I think there might be some shortcuts 🤞
Production quality hugely surpasses sub count. I hope your channel blows up man, good work
Why do I go to college when there’s people like you out in the world who are capable of incorporating every field of science into a single project on their own terms?
For control interfaces. They look like those DJI osimo camera gambles… maybe you could use one of those as a test input? It almost looks like two of those together, might give you the 6 axis…
I actually work at intuitive. You can get a tour of the factory and get in a robot and actually drive it. The insertion of the instrument to the robot is genius and you may glean some information by going through the tour.
This is one of the most thought out, well-executed project/video's I've seen in a while. Incredible work. Can't wait for part two!
My dad worked on the user interface for intuitive surgical. I think the best thing is to have something that takes in hand movements ie the pinching rotating and back and forth motion of someone's hand.
I actually got a chance to play around with one of these when I was 8 or 9. I was really interested in the body and wanted to be a surgeon so my mom took me to a davinci surgical system information conference (geared more towards elderly people who needed surgery) and they had one on display that they would let people use. It was absolutely incredible, especially for the time.
I worked in surgical robotics for a few years, the way the tool attaches is via the sterile drape, you have it right that is it is spring loaded but each input axis typically has a disc that that can side before engaging and creates an oldham coupler to take up small misalignments. Typically you have to engage the drape side first onto the robot and then the drape to the tool. As someone else said the robot uses an RCM- remote center so the Dofs needed are smaller than you might believe- this reason the DaVinci has so many joints is to setup the RCM to the patient and then have redundant motion for clearance arm to arm. The Xi is far superior to the Si in this regard.
As to the inputs, you really don’t need anything crazy. The reason the DaVinci inputs are crazy is that they need the user to match the location and orientation of the tool. You can get away with nearly any kind of 6Dof sensor and it will work fine, you just have to pay attention when you clutch in and out a lot more.
The tools are cool inside, there are many different mechanisms to drive the wrist depending on device. If you open one know that the cables are tungsten and will be near impossible to cut and once cut conventionally become unusable.
I was just looking for something like this last week after trying to solder TINY wires on equally tiny SMD LEDS. I just ordered one and will be following along!
About the controls:
1, a glove that controls the 2 metallic "fingers" precisely.
2, Either 2 cameras to detect your hand "gestures" (we do not care the fingers) or a leap motion to detect the gestures.
3, some kind of virtual UI to assign the robot arms to your arms so you can control them with 1, and 2,
This is a good starting point. Later on you will need some kind of stand as your hands would be super tired and painful after keeping them in air for 30 minutes.
If you like it and you need help, just let me know.
You are now in my list of favorite channels on TH-cam. PLEASE SHARE THIS VIDEO WITH BEN OF *APPLIED SCIENCE* and *ALPHAPHOENIX* even Cody or medhi
This guy is starting to resemble a mad scientist. Like an actual technical prowess with the "polishness" of his creation to make it feasible
This is really neat. I build non invasive medical devices at work. I don't have a college degree but I am determined to improve one of our products before I die. Videos like this are very inspiring to me.
So I’m no doctor but I was able to play with one of these once. I’m a respiratory therapist and when I was in school and at a nearby hospital doing clinical practice there was one set up as a display/demo model in the lobby. It was there for doctors to come down and play with. I took a chance and told them I was only a student but asked if I could get on the controls for a few minutes. They were super cool and let me try it out. They had an orange and some suturing needles. I was able to run a few sutures into an orange. The system they use to actually control the various arms/instruments while complicated were pretty intuitive to use. It was a great experience. This all of course was like 15+ years ago but I don’t think much has changed since.
hey, i used to work with a company that made the instruments. i was in the repairs department and received incoming and just because the hospitals say its been sterilised doesnt mean its fully clean. I saw bits and residue still attached and inside the mechanisms near 100% of the time, they also lose sterility because of bacterial growth and biofilms on the instruments and in the instruments, it's a huge reason why the parts have a limited lifespan. just a gross fyi when dealing with used medical instruments.
incase ur wondering the slide in fit is as simple as it gets, the plastic has enough elastic deformation to accommodate the pins sliding into the motors and its also part of the force limiting of the motors since the pins wont allow excessive force before just breaking, rather the pins break on the machine than an instrument breaks inside the patient.
cool! I used the controller of this in a conference, they had this hand controller but so small it would sit on a normal desk, and was connected to a PC running the simulated machine; the output was on screen BUT also on the 2 lenses microscope, so you would get full 3D.
I saw many people struggle with it, but i aced their little "obstacle course", it felt very intuitive. I remeber I could move my hand whenever i wanted and never hit any physical limit, so there is some VERY smart mechanical design there
I think a diy robot would work just fine in our clinic. Maybe the doctor will finally get me a raise.
For input you could probably use a switch joycon lol, 3-axis gyro, a trigger and few buttons. You could also use both in conjunction for even more options.
I got to use one of these at a robotics competition back in high school, no clue why they were there but turned out to be a cool/rare experience!
Paused at 4:30. The irony of you having these in what looks like the sterilization case and your puppy walking around on them was hilarious. On with the video.
I bet that looking into puppeteering solutions could help a lot in developing controls for the system. They seem to find some amazing engineering solutions for precise movement on a shoe string budget.
You could use a "potentiometer glove" trick to control >12 motors. Each finger controls a servo via a string/pulley to a potentiometer attached near the knuckles; then using a gyroscope/accelerometer for bigger movements of the larger arms.
I've always wanted a giant one in the corner of the lounge room. Where it can move furniture around anywhere in the room
Seems you could easily map to a couple of left/right flightsticks (HOTAS) to accomplish the needed inputs for the servos.
Use sensor gloves to make an intuitive control system. The gestures used can be similar to if you were holding actual surgical instruments
So dope, I am following your endeavor now
Oh man, this is great content! Love that it also exposes how inflated medical equipment costs are.
Until you run the numbers on what it takes for even a class 1 device to get to market. Say goodbye to millions before you even sell your first unit. Then there’s QMS, etc etc etc. etc etc etc. A pacemaker implant costs only a fraction of what a lot of folks happily pay for a new car
The disks from the instrument do not connect directly to motors. The attachment arm has disk that are controlled by steel wires that run inside the arm. So the motors are inside the larger elbows of the arm.
You could use a controller from a VR headset. Positional and rotational tracking, plus a bunch of buttons and triggers. All on one hand
for the controlls: there are open source versions of the spacemouse (tho none are at the stage of completion yet I'd say), that could probably be a pretty intuitive solution if you add another force sensor that measures squeezing or something for closing the sissors
Gosh your montage is refreshing ! I really enjoy your effort on this, and on the content also
Hope your channel gets the success you deserve ! 🚀
I have worked in surgical robotics research. For input we have used two Force Dimension Omega 7 haptic devices which is probably beyond hobby budget, but maybe you find used ones. I can also try to ask their co-founder if they maybe have some leftovers :P Your best option would probably be two space mice by 3Dconnexion, although that means differential input, but better than nothing. If your robotic arms have enough freedom that you can do 6d motion with those tools, you need another input per hand for open and close, but maybe you can use foot pedals for that. I also got to try the DaVinci on a conference in simulation, it's cool but it's not overwhelming ;)
There are open source 6 DOF mice akin to those space mice as well with identical/better performance out there now. I can grab link spam if need be.
Thanks so much for the pointers- I’ll keep my eyes peeled for space mice and look into Omega 7, this is the first I’ve learned about it!
Just found this guy’s open source version- parts on the way! th-cam.com/video/iHBgNGnTiK4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=oFAwNk67MaiLaNng
It'll be interesting to see how you set up the controller using an input like this, I think impedance control would feel very differently from what exists today but it could be effective for your needs
This content is absolute gold. I am subbed and glued to my seat, both ironically and unironically. I have been waiting for someone to tackle controlling these, as the used tooling looks very capable for other uses outside a surgeon's use.
For input, consider a VR controller. Within VR you can scale your inputs relative to the amount of motion you want to produce, and tracking is already 6dof
My recommendation for making that setup to control it is simple, but also complex. Make 3D printed analog sticks that you can hook your fingers in, then set the analog sticks on a surface that makes them easy to use. You can then put the finished device on something like a space mouse in order to move it forward, backward, or rotate the arms. Pushing down can lower, and pulling up can raise it. Or you can just use a scroll wheel which would be a lot more precise. Now that I think about it, scroll wheels would be the best choice in a lot of cases considering how hard it is to overshoot with them.
The possibilities for these things are huge. With the right AI, these machines could do surgeries much faster and far more accurately than human hands could ever do them.
This is wildly unnecessary, but I’m so incredibly glad it exists. Thank you, sir. Keep it up.
For the control solution, my first idea would be the Novint Falcon. Might be worth taking a look.
I can see your focusing and studying other TH-camrs to make these videos as good as they can be, as soon as possible. Paying off really well, good camera presence, editing etc :)
you could use a foot pedal to open a page on a screen, select the arm you want and operate...
Needs force feedback. Probably with torque control.
With two identical robot arms that have force feedback you can control one with the other and vice versa.
If you want a small one for detailed surgery you can scale the forces and motions from the small one to the large one.
Similar to shocks on motorcycle forks, many of those monitor arms have a "preload" screw which adjusts tension on the return spring. Often tiny, if you can find/reach it, backing off that screw will reduce the need for ballast weight.
There may be one per segment. Expect a grub screw with a tiny hex head nestled in the joint that is colinear with the long axis of the arm segment. I bought cheap amazon arms and I needed a magnifier to see them.
You are probably mechanically skilled enough to swap out the spring but I am probably not: I expect it to sort of explode during disassembly, distributing key mechanisms around the room.
I know other people have made this point already, but I think it still bears repeating. I’m directly involved in a company which works with medical devices like this one, and the primary reason that medical devices have such limited lifespans is the testing requirements and the brutality of the sterilization process. Each device that we make goes through literal months of tests (the project I’m on right now has about 6 months of just testing planned, and it’s nowhere near as complex as a surgical robot,) and the end goal of all of these is to ensure that your device will not fail under normal use conditions or have any side-effects that would harm the patient. Parts that are being tested need to be equivalent to production parts, so for this machine in specific they likely needed to spin up an entire production line to produce the parts required for the testing. (For the project I’m working on right now, we’re making over 500 complete devices, just to test.) On top of that, the devices will need to go through sterilization cycles in-between each use, and no matter what method is used they take a massive hit on the integrity of parts that are cleaned. All in all it just makes more sense to test the minimum numbers of parts possible, to a level that doctors and insurance companies indicated would be acceptable.
Aside from that, I’m incredibly excited that you get to show off the inner workings of some of these devices to a larger audience. The technology is fascinating and your videos on the topic have been awesome!