A potential function approach to surface coverage for a surgical robot

Abstract

This paper considers some implementation issues in a path planner for achieving uniform coverage of a non-Euclidean bony surface embedded in R3 space. The target application for this planner is bone removal in orthopaedic surgery, but the technique can also be applied to other general surface-coverage problems. Specifically, we use cellular decomposition and sweep lines to generate a set of meaningful way-points for the bone-burring robot to visit, then navigate between these way-points using potential functions.