Sensing techniques for mechatronic clinical tools

This paper reports on sensing techniques developed for tool systems in clinical application. The examples described are for controlling tool penetration through and on the surface of tissue interfaces in the form of a micro-drill and steerable endoscope tip respectively. It is shown that as automatically interpreting multi sensory information, it is possible to identify the state of the tool/tissue interaction and to judge critical states of processes. These solutions have so far been implemented with clinical tools of a conventional size, however the principles can also be applied at the micro level