Neurointerventional Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities

Excerpt

The term “robot” first appeared in a 1920 play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek, titled R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots) [1]. It was derived from the Czech word “robota”, which means servitude or forced labor. Although the word “robot” is nowadays widely used in everyday language, it is not clearly defined what we actually mean by it. The Robotic Institute of America has defined a robot as “a reprogrammable multifunctional manipulator designed to move materials, parts, tools, or other specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks”[2, 3]. Medical robotics account for 8% of all professional service robot sales, and with increasing popularity, worldwide sales figures increased by 20% from 2011 to 2013. This is mostly due to growing demands in the field of robot-assisted surgery [4], but medical robots are increasingly used for other purposes as well: some hospitals use cleaning robots which emit UV rays for instance, delivery robots transport meals and medication to patients’ rooms, and rehabilitation robots have been successfully integrated in many surgical and neurological rehabilitation programs [5]. In the field of neurointervention, robots are clearly on the rise: in the early months of 2020, 3 studies were published in rapid succession that showed safety and feasibility of robot-assisted aneurysm coiling, [6] diagnostic angiography [7] and carotid stenting [7, 8], and leaders in the field are already thinking about how to create appropriate ethical and medicolegal frameworks [9] to ensure smooth and safe integration of robots into the neurointerventional workspace. …