Robotic manufacturing of complete dentures

摘要

Although many medical robots have been developed, such as surgical robots, nurse robots, etc., very few robots are introduced in the research field of oral restoration, especially false-teeth restoration. Currently, false-teeth restoration is done manually. Robotic manufacturing system of complete dentures is described in this paper, which performs a complete false teeth automatic implanting. It relies on the use of a special light sensitive material that hardens under lighting. In this system, a robot grasps selected standard teeth and implants them in fixed positions. Expert system software is developed which integrates high-level dentist's experience and technician's dexterous skill, it creates the control data for the robot to implant every tooth correctly into the denture base. The software can display 3D pre-composition of complete denture and realized man-machine interaction. The dentist can easily and conveniently adjust and modify every tooth's position and orientation in complete dentures. This software can also realize path planning and data communication between the computer and the robot controller. This robotic system will change the manner of complete denture manufacturing, significantly improving its quality efficiency.