IDP: Human-Robot Collision Prevention in the OR

Thesis by: open
Advisor: Prof. Nassir Navab
Supervision by: Ralf Stauder, Daniel Ostler
Due date: tba
Please note: Although this project is planned as an IDP, it can easily be adjusted to fit the requirements of a Bachelor's/Master's thesis or other, similar projects.

Abstract

The "operating room of the future" will in many situations be equipped with various robotic assistance systems, ranging from imaging and support systems all the way to fully robotic surgery suites. In all of these situations, though, human actors will still remain active around the patient, either as assistant and nurse for surgeries with only minimal or temporary robotic support, or as technical assistants in fully robotic interventions. As robotic systems gain more context awareness, intelligence, and autonomy with increasing processing and algorithmic power, the interaction between robotic and human actors becomes an increasingly more important research area, both for the safety of involved humans, as well as for the acceptance of the robotic systems.

As a first step towards this goal, the robotic systems must know the pose of all humans in its vicinity. The aim of this project is to detect and track people and the robot in the complex environment of the operating theatre through depth sensors.