IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
		     Central New England Chapter

		      Tuesday, February 21, 2006
		     Informal Discussion: 6:00 PM
			   Program: 6:30 PM

		 SHOULD YOUR NEXT DOCTOR BE A ROBOT?

			     Presented by

			Prof. Pierre E. Dupont
		 Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
			  Boston University
			  110 Cummington St.
			   Boston, MA 02215
	       http://robotics.bu.edu/dupont/index.htm

ABSTRACT

The introduction of robots to medicine has
paralleled their introduction to manufacturing
over twenty-five years ago. In the latter case,
robot salesmen convinced manufacturers that
robots were the panacea to assembly-line
problems. Only after many robots were sold was it
discovered that robots, like people, are only
good at certain things. But with all of the
robots out there in the workplace, there were
plenty of chances to figure out what those things
were.

In the last decade, medical robots have been
introduced with great fanfare=8A and mixed results.
Sales pitches were made based on the best guess
of what robots would be good at in surgery. Those
guesses weren't perfect and many surgeons have
been disappointed. The field is now at the stage
of regrouping to figure out what medical robots
might really be good at and furthermore, what
they should look like. This is a more challenging
problem than was faced in manufacturing for
several obvious reasons. First, the human anatomy
cannot be redesigned to accommodate the robot.
Second, there are no volunteers for run-time
debugging. Third, success of the robot depends on
the availability and integration of a variety of
enabling technologies, such as real-time,
high-resolution imaging.

This talk describes the speaker's experiences
working with surgeons to discover a robot's place
in the OR. Applications from minimally invasive
surgery are discussed including current projects
in beating-heart, intracardiac surgery. In these
procedures, instruments are inserted through the
heart wall to repair the internal structures of
the heart. Real-time 3D ultrasound is used to
image the instruments and tissues inside the
heart.


SPEAKER'S BIOGRAPHY

Pierre E. Dupont is an Associate Professor at
Boston University and is Associate Scientific
Staff in the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery
at Children's Hospital, Boston. He received the
BS, MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering
from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1982,
1984 and 1988, respectively. He was a
postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University from
1988 to 1990 and then joined the faculty of
Boston University. His current research and
teaching interests include image-guided minimally
invasive surgery, telerobotics and control
systems. He has published over 65 journal and
conference papers and has served as an Associate
Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and
Automation as well for the IEEE Transactions on
Robotics. He is currently a member of the
Administrative Committee of the IEEE Robotics and
Automation Society.


MEETING INFORMATION

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society will
meet on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 at Wellesley
High School at 6:00 PM for informal discussions
and for the formal presentation between 6:30 and
7:30 PM. The group will have a no-host dinner
afterwards at Bertucci's, where more
conversations can take place with the guest
speaker. The meetings are open to the general
public, and all are welcome at the dinner
afterwards.

For more information about this meeting contact
Peter Meyer at 781-334-0052 or the Chapter email
address: info@robotics-boston.org


DIRECTIONS

From Route 128, take either Route 9 or Route 16
west. From the junction of Routes 9 and 16,
follow Route 16 (Washington Street) west past the
Wellesley Hills commuter rail station (within
walking distance of the school, then turn left
onto Rice Street. Wellesley High School is on the
left. Parking is available in a lot just beyond
the school.

For a web map showing the location of Wellesley
High School, go to the Yahoo map site at
http://maps.yahoo.com/ and enter the following
information in the indicated locations:

     Address:   	50 Rice St
     City, State or ZIP: Wellesley, MA

The star marker is misplaced slightly to the
south. Imagine it about 1 cm toward the top of
the map at Rice St.

For more information about our Section and
Chapter, visit our web site at our new registered
domain URL

http://www.robotics-boston.org/