A Robot System for Automated Wound Filling with Jetted Materials

Skin surface wounds due to burns, surgeries and chronic illness affect millions of people worldwide. Tissue engineering has become an increasingly popular treatment, but it is a highly manual process. Increasing the automation in tissue engineering could increase the rate of treatment for patients and improve outcomes. We present an initial investigation into an automated in-situ treatment. In our proposed method, a 3D machine vision system detects a skin wound to be treated and then determines the 3D point set corresponding to the wound. The 3D point set is then passed to path planning algorithm for a robot manipulator to move an ink-jet nozzle over the wound and fill the cavity with quick-curing/gelling fluids such collagen and other biomaterials and cell growth promoters. This paper details initial results and experimental validation of each of the proposed steps.