Increasing accessibility to medical robotics education

Abstract

To overcome existing barriers in medical robotics education, this paper presents work done during a joint-collaboration project that creates a new educational toolset and associated curriculum for demonstrating telesurgery applications. Created using the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotics set, programmed with LabVIEW, and capable of doing real-time closed-loop control over large distances, the project team developed a product aimed at influencing 6 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">th</sup> to 8 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">th</sup> grade classrooms by exposing the students to engineering design and communication topics within the real-world application of medical robotics.