This paper presents a new tele-operated robotic chain for real-time ultrasound image acquisition and medical diagnosis. This system has been developed in the frame of the Mobile Tele-Echography Using an Ultralight Robot European Project. A light-weight six degrees-of-freedom serial robot, with a remote center of motion, has been specially designed for this application. It holds and moves a real probe on a distant patient according to the expert gesture and permits an image acquisition using a standard ultrasound device. The combination of mechanical structure choice for the robot and dedicated control law, particularly nearby the singular configuration allows a good path following and a robotized gesture accuracy. The choice of compression techniques for image transmission enables a compromise between flow and quality. These combined approaches, for robotics and image processing, enable the medical specialist to better control the remote ultrasound probe holder system and to receive stable and good quality ultrasound images to make a diagnosis via any type of communication link from terrestrial to satellite. Clinical tests have been performed since April 2003. They used both satellite or Integrated Services Digital Network lines with a theoretical bandwidth of 384 Kb/s. They showed the tele-echography system helped to identify 66% of lesions and 83% of symptomatic pathologies.
As demands increase to use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for a broad spectrum of commercial applications, regulatory authorities are examining how to safely integrate them without compromising safety or disrupting traditional airspace operations. For small UAS, several operational rules have been established; e.g., do not operate beyond visual line-ofsight, do not fly within five miles of a commercial airport, do not fly above 400 ft above ground level. Enforcing these rules is challenging for UAS, as evidenced by the number of incident reports received by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This paper reviews the development of an onboard system -Safeguarddesigned to monitor and enforce conformance to a set of operational rules defined prior to flight (e.g., geospatial stay-out or stay-in regions, speed limits, and altitude constraints). Unlike typical geofencing or geo-limitation functions, Safeguard operates independently of the off-the-shelf UAS autopilot and is designed in a way that can be realized by a small set of verifiable functions to simplify compliance with existing standards for safety-critical systems (e.g. for spacecraft and manned commercial transportation aircraft systems). A framework is described that decouples the system from any other devices on the UAS as well as introduces complementary positioning source(s) for applications that require integrity and availability beyond what can be provided by the Global Positioning System (GPS). This paper summarizes the progress and test results forSafeguard research and development since presentation of the design concept at the 35th DASC (2016). Significant accomplishments include completion of software verification and validation in accordance with NASA standards for spacecraft systems (to Class B), development of improved hardware prototypes, development of a simulation platform that allows for hardware-in-the-loop testing and fast-time Monte Carlo evaluations, and flight testing on multiple air vehicles. Integration testing with NASA's UAS Traffic Management (UTM) service-oriented architecture was also demonstrated.
This paper discusses a positioning and navigation algorithm to support autonomous flight of a small-size unmanned aircraft system in a structured GNSS-denied environment during a maintenance mission. The proposed method is based on the integration of depth imagery and outputs from an inertial measurement unit (IMU). In addition, 2D images of a low resolution long-wave IR (LWIR) sensor are used to aid the navigation process and support the maintenance mission by creating a thermal map of the indoor environment. A platform has been built with the appropriate sensors and data has been collected. The paper describes the methodology, the test platform and some preliminary results from mostly the preprocessing steps.
Director of Thesis: Maarten Uijt de Haag Many mobile devices (phones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.) have incorporated embedded GNSS receivers into their designs allowing for widespread on-demand positioning. These receivers are typically less capable than dedicated receivers and can have an error of 8-20m. However, future application, such as UAS package delivery, will require higher accuracy positioning. Recently, the raw GPS measurements from these receivers have been made accessible to developers on select mobile devices. This allows GPS augmentation techniques usually reserved for expensive precision-grade receivers to be applied to these low cost embedded receivers. This thesis will explore the effects of various GPS augmentation techniques on these receivers.
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