Page 179 - Control Theory in Biomedical Engineering

164 Control theory in biomedical engineering

between levels of biomimicry and biocompatibility related to different clas-
ses of biomedical soft robots.
In Wolf and Shoham (2009), the authors stressed four requirements
for medical robots: (1) simple operation, (2) safety, (3) easy sterilization,
and (4) compact size and light weight. These requirements are shown in
Fig. 10 in which safety considerations are highlighted and further explained.
It is obvious that all parties in contact with the patient or surgeon must be
easily sterilized. A surgery robotic system should be sterile using one of the
following three methods (Troccaz, 2012):
– Sterilization according to different processes such as autoclave or the
Sterrad process,
– Disposable sterile packaging,
– Reusable sterile packaging.
Fig. 11 shows a sterilizable robot vs. a robot in sterile packaging.
In Daneshmand et al. (2017), the authors highlighted six requirements of
utmost importance for medical robotics: (1) safety, (2) sterilization, (3) pre-
cision in the positioning of the instrument, (4) efficiency, (5) user-
friendliness, and (6) cost.

Fig. 10 Main requirements for medical robots. Adapted from Wolf, A., Shoham, M., 2009.
Medical automation and robotics. In Springer Handbook of Automation. Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg, pp. 1397–1407. doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-78831-7_78.