<div class="page photo" style=""> <article> <header style=" background-image:url(/imageLibrary/7K0A0664_16312.JPG); "> <div class="box"> <div class="intro" style="color: #ff7f2a;"> <h1 style="color: #ff7f2a !important;">What's New</h1> <p class="summary"></p> </div> </div> </header> <div class="main"> <div class="container"> <p class="byline"> </p> <h4><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/medical-robots/would-you-trust-a-robot-surgeon-to-operate-on-you" target="_blank">Would You Trust a Robot Surgeon to Operate on You?</a></h4><p>May 31, 2016 by Eliza Strickland</p><p><img src="/uploads/5774f05dd3269.jpg" unselectable="on"></p><p>Illustration : Carl De Torres</p><p><strong>Inside the glistening red cave</strong> of the patient’s abdomen, surgeon Michael Stifelman carefully guides two robotic arms to tie knots in a piece of thread. He manipulates a third arm to drive a suturing needle through the fleshy mass of the patient’s kidney, stitching together the hole where a tumor used to be. The final arm holds the endoscope that streams visuals to Stifelman’s display screens. Each arm enters the body through a tiny incision about 5 millimeters wide.</p><p>To watch this tricky procedure is to marvel at what can be achieved when robot and human work in tandem. Stifelman, who has done several thousand robot-assisted surgeries as director of NYU Langone’s <a href="http://nyulangone.org/locations/robotic-surgery-center">Robotic Surgery Center</a>, controls the robotic arms from a console. If he swivels his wrist and pinches his fingers closed, the instruments inside the patient’s body perform the same exact motions on a much smaller scale. “The robot is one with me,” Stifelman says as his mechanized appendages pull tight another knot.</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2fnv_3qn3Yc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><p>Yet some roboticists, if they were watching this dexterous performance, would see not a modern marvel but instead wasted potential. Stifelman, after all, is a highly trained expert with valuable skills and judgment—yet he’s spending his precious time suturing, just tidying up after the main surgery. If the robot could handle this tedious task on its own, the surgeon would be freed up for more important work.</p><p>Today’s surgical robots extend the surgeon’s capacities; they filter out hand tremors and allow maneuvers that even the best surgeon couldn’t pull off with laparoscopic surgery’s typical long-handled tools (sometimes dismissively called “chopsticks”). But at the end of the day, the robot is just a fancier tool under direct human control. Dennis Fowler, executive vice president of the surgical robotics company <a href="http://www.titanmedicalinc.com/">Titan Medical</a>, is among those who think medicine will be better served if the robots become autonomous agents that make decisions and independently carry out their assigned tasks. “This is a technological intervention to add reliability and reduce errors of human fallibility,” says Fowler, who worked as a surgeon for 32 years before moving to industry.</p><p><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/medical-robots/would-you-trust-a-robot-surgeon-to-operate-on-you" target="_blank">Read more</a></p><h4><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/diagnostics/for-dieters-smart-glasses-could-detect-and-record-every-chew" target="_blank">For Dieters, Smart Glasses Could Detect and Record Every Chew</a></h4><p>Posted 27 Jun 2016 by Eliza Strickland</p><p><img src="/uploads/5774f1ae709e6.jpg" unselectable="on"></p><p>Photo : University of Passau</p><p>Whether you’re trying to lose weight, eat healthier, or track your diet for other reasons, there’s no truly easy and automatic way to log your food intake. Today’s best options are apps that require you to pick the food items you’re consuming or manually enter that information. </p><p>But what if the app knew, without your help, that you’d just spent a half hour crunching on cookies? </p><p>That’s the idea behind the “Diet Eyeglasses” revealed earlier this month at the <a href="http://bsn.embs.org/2016/">IEEE Body Sensor Networks conference</a> in San Francisco. The smart glasses have built-in sensors that detect muscle activity related to chewing, which could enable the continuous and unobtrusive monitoring of every morsel users chow down on.</p><p>Professor <a href="http://www.fim.uni-passau.de/en/sensor-technology/people/?module=Persondetails&target=87482&source=87482&config_id=7159c8d0d2d665b0640649fe924a184b&range_id=9476b9ae85bd94d65814526dc124f29f&username=amft01&hash=602110316">Oliver Amft</a>, a researcher at Germany’s University of Passau, 3-D printed <a href="http://www.fim.uni-passau.de/en/sensor-technology/news/news/detail/regular-look-eyeglasses-monitor-chewing/">his smart glasses</a>. They look like normal spectacles, but feature sensors made from flexible woven fabric electrodes attached to the glasses’ frame. The sensors use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromyography">electromyography</a> (EMG) to detect contractions of facial muscles involved in chewing. After experimenting with different locations for the sensors, Amft and his students found that tucking them into the frame behind the ears produces the best contact with the user’s skin, and thus the best signal. The small processor and rechargeable battery are also attached behind the ear. </p><p><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/diagnostics/for-dieters-smart-glasses-could-detect-and-record-every-chew" target="_blank">Read more</a></p> </div> </div> </article> </div><!-- /page-->